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Diaspora, Love, and Limits
When Sue Timon and I met, she greeted me with a pound hug. She grabbed my
right hand and swung her le around my back, and I did the same, feeling a bit
compelled. At the end of the shake, our ngers met and hung tight while our hands
quickly moved downward before release. is gesture, known as a pound hug or
a pound and a hug, is an embrace of familiarity between friends or comrades and
is typically performed by masculine people. I possessed a certain type of bodily
unaccustomedness since I do not typically perform this gesture, although I am
familiar with it. Timon would later state during my interview with her that how
artists greet each other is signicant: “e greetings. ‘Yeah, what’s up?’ Ah, there’s
this [U.S. rap] Southern thing, I don’t know how they put it. ‘How we do?’ [Laughs.]
ere’s that greeting part of the thing.”1 e phrase “How we do?” is not known to
be associated specically with Southern hip hop in the U.S., especially given West
Coast rapper e Game’s song of the same name. It is possible that Timon could
have been referring to “What it do?,” which is a phrase that emanates from the
U.S. hip hop South. Nonetheless, Timon’s references to U.S. Southern rap culture
represent a larger and more signicant pattern. Her embodiments displayed styled
joviality and the seamless coupling of U.S. blackness with her understanding
of the world as a Kenyan person. The coalescence of her words and perfor-
mances demonstrates one of the many ways rap culture in Kenya and Africa
pro duces ideas of diaspora. Kenyan artists use U.S. hip hop blackness to realize
themselves as artists, to make music about Nairobi, and to produce notions of
Africanity and Kenyanness.
In this chapter, I piece together the elements that constitute diaspora, Pan-
Africanism, and love in the Nairobi underground, inspired by Sue’s brief inter-
action with me during our conversation. ese elements help rappers negotiate
Diaspora, Love, and Limits
through divisive social conditions within the country and connect to hip hop’s
transnationality. As I laid out in the introduction, within African hip hop studies,
many scholars explore how artists indigenized the music by abandoning English-
only lyrics for rap bars in indigenous languages and by disavowing gangsta rap
for politically salient sounds. ere is more to be said about hip hop’s engage-
ment with what is largely referred to as the “global” and what I identify as a Black
diasporic performance politics. For example, Caroline Mose observes that Nai-
robi rap draws on globally practiced traditions, like swag and street cred. Drawing
from Murray Foreman, she briey writes of Nairobi’s connectivity to blackness
within hip hop: “e city is seen through an expanded vision of Blackness, where
an international Black tradition is manifested in the local space; local and national
borders are erased, and the city becomes an extension of a global Black experi-
ence.”2 ough she mentions street cred and swag as performances, most of her
instances asserting Nairobi’s formations of blackness are lyrical, and it is from here
that I build on Mose through my attention toward orature. is chapter explores
how diaspora is profoundly evident in the orature of artists—how the linguistic,
the embodied, and the sonic converge with other characteristics contained within
music videos and live performances.
A hip hop diaspora in Nairobi is made up of four key points. First, I iden-
tify that a collective and public political love is a dominant theme in the music
that undergirds diaspora. is political love does not t neatly into a local-global
binary and occurs in hip hop ow throughout the lyrics, sounds, and movements.
Political love serves as a framing device and creates space for how ideas of dias-
pora circulate throughout the culture. It is most readily identiable through lyrics,
community initiatives, and the way rappers discuss why they make the music they
do. Political love is both a local production of Kenyan sensibilities and a participa-
tion in a larger imagined global culture. When Sue Timon greeted me as an old
acquaintance, she enacted an assumed commonality of love for and devotion to
the music. Although we had not met before, that did not matter to Timon because
she felt compelled to communicate with me through an embodied language of
hip hop blackness (although the pound hug exists outside of the culture as well).
e aection she presented to me was not just individualized (between us) but a
broad gestural nod meant to identify the commonalities between two devotees
from dierent parts of the world. In essence, her brief action demonstrated the
local practice of a globalized music culture.
Second, Nairobi hip hop diaspora is composed of interpreted notions of U.S.
blackness, which may be explicit references to the U.S. or more subtle citations.
As previously stated, diasporic blackness operates as an indigenizing force by
allowing practitioners to root the music in their own localities. Like Sue Timon’s
gesture, it is oen embodied performance, materializing as ludic and masculin-
ized. Furthermore, hip hop diasporic blackness dynamically draws in other forms
, ,
of Afrodiasporic cultural characteristics. I depart from scholars like Marc Perry,
who identies the ways that artists perform the culture through lyrics and aes-
thetic bodily style, resulting in the specic creation of an Afro-Atlantic diasporic
blackness. He references South Africa, Cuba, and Brazil, noting, “Blackness, as
such, becomes a transnational site of identication and self-making; one made
most immediately tangible for many diasporic youth by way of hip hop.”3 Perry
argues that this music diaspora draws on multiple sites of blackness throughout
the Atlantic world: “Diasporic rather than U.S. understandings of blackness are
in the end instrumental in fashioning critical expressions of black Brazilian self.”4 I
contend that hip hop diasporic blackness is fundamentally rooted in U.S. notions,
even while artists draw on and devise modes of blackness and Africanity that
digress from the U.S. Perry notes how rappers use gures like Malcolm X, baseball
caps from American teams, and baggy pants. He states that Brazilian rappers Con-
sciencia Urbana drew on how U.S. rap used Malcolm X’s radical positionality and
recongured him to be a global and diasporic gure in their project, thus exem-
plifying its diasporic blackness. However, such moves by Urbana depend upon
recognizing that American hip hop rst engaged with Malcolm X, a dominant
gure in the U.S. Black struggle, even as he turned his politics globally outward.
While we must recognize the diverse ways artists play with notions of diaspora,
hip hop, no matter where it is located, always contains a persistent, originary
U.S. blackness.
ird, Nairobi’s hip hop diasporic blackness lays the foundation for profound
notions of Pan-Africanist sensibilities that draw signicant cultural connections
within Africa and places outside of the U.S. Nairobi artists recognize and celebrate
their Africaness not in opposition to a ubiquitous blackness but because of it.
Moreover, the music’s Pan-Africanism allows Nairobi artists to celebrate uniquely
Kenyan musical contributions alongside other African cultural elements. Both
the diasporic blackness and Pan-Africanism in Nairobi music are always a ges-
ture back to the local, and, in fact, these characteristics say more about on-the-
ground politics and realities than they do about anything beyond Kenya’s borders.
rough examining two songs, Nafsi Huru, NJE, and Kevlexicon’s “Still Strong”
and Mic Crenshaw, Khusta, Ran-D, Judge, and MC Bagol’s “Amandla,” I identify
how ideas of diasporic blackness and Pan-African sensibilities appear through
Kenyan lenses, which grounds the music as a local and indigenized production
of the global. Specically, relying on Nairobi as an international city of commerce,
rappers paint it as a place of economic, political, and cultural motion, where they
imagine themselves at the center of this motility. Inspired by Soyica Diggs Colbert,
who discusses that movement is about not staying in one place, whether physically,
socially, or politically, I contend that rappers align hip hop’s physical motility with
the various political movements they may reference throughout the African dias-
pora.5 While these songs seek to transcend national boundaries through diaspora
and Pan-Africanism, they use the globality inherent in hip hop to respond to the
local and closely felt state violence and repression in Kenya.
Last, Nairobi practitioners do not accept all forms of hip hop blackness they
encounter. Most position their work as separate and oppositional to gangsta
rap and thug subjectivities, which both fans and critics widely reference. Artists
understand the gure of the gangsta or thug as incompatible with their versions of
diasporic blackness, Pan-Africanism, and political love. For most artists, this
gure is antithetical to the objectives of social change and wades too far outside
of political seriousness, and many see it as a way to be further discounted by crit-
ics. In the U.S., the gangsta or thug has been seized by hip hop and is rendered
a masculinized and romanticized antihero who participates in illicit economies
and eschews societal hatred of Black men.6 In Kenya, the thug is not necessarily
glamorized, emerging during colonialism to name Africans as unruly and crimi-
nal and continues to the present day to label them as intrinsically and ferociously
lawless and violent.7 Nairobi rappers, thus, depend on this gure and its meaning
in Kenya to state armatively what work they do not do, and criticism and dis-
missal of the gangsta or thug helps artists dene their music. e widescale jet-
tisoning of this trope in the underground means that not every characteristic of
the U.S. suces and that artists vet what is functional to produce their aesthetic
interventions. Marc Perry is informative to this point, demonstrating how early
South African rappers, looking to defy apartheid’s racial categories, employed
the music to create a “recuperative notion of a black Africanness.”8 Despite the
signicant racial and ethnic dierences between South Africa and Kenya,
the notion that rappers produce African formations of blackness—which, I
argue, cite the U.S.—applies to the Kenyan scene, as these artists do not aban-
don aliation with their ethnic communities or their identities as Kenyan and
African, but rather incorporate modes of blackness into their embodied perfor-
mances. If at all, artists rarely and briey integrate notions of the gangsta or thug
into their work. Here, I rely on conversations with several artists and a reading
of Evaredi’s video, “Ukweli,” which briey references the thug persona. I contend
“Ukweli” ’s overarching themes of Pan-Africanism and the art of the struggle
work to undo the troubling histories of the term thug and participate in creating
masculine-centered notions of diaspora.
For the nal section, I do a close read of the Kenyan documentary Ni
Wakati. e artists proled from the U.S. and Kenya are invested in arguing
that hip hop has African roots and thus is fundamentally African. However, in
attempting to put forward this concept, they inadvertently arm how U.S. black-
ness is an unremitting signal for the music, upholding my central point that
all hip hop is rooted in a negotiated U.S. blackness, however slight or abstract.
Using this lm, I maintain that artists engage in an ongoing citational prac-
tice with the U.S. that grounds the ways they imagine and perform a masculin-
ized underclass diaspora. Taken together, the examples laid out in this chapter
, ,
articulate how cisgender men are the unspoken appointed drivers of a diasporic
transnationality in the music.
POLITICAL LOVE
Political love is an indispensable theme in Nairobi hip hop on its own terms and
through its connectedness to diaspora. It serves as a staging ground for articula-
tions of diaspora because it moves artists past boundaries and creates openings
for them to connect with others outside of socially constructed categories. Rap’s
continual references to love are not just about fondness toward the music; rather,
they are about a deeply entrenched aection utilized by rappers to prove their
innate and undying commitment to the music culture, to Kenyans, and oen to
Africana peoples at large. Such sentiments mark out connections that allow art-
ists to produce various subjectivities about what it means to be Black, Kenyan, a
part of their respective ethnic community, and African. erefore, this political
love operates in two ways: to attend to local realities in Kenya about how to create
a culture and to connect artists to a global imagined hip hop community. Such a
sentiment mirrors Keguro Macharia’s insistence on a type of love that enables
transformative ideas and actions. He writes that love can be holistic: “an embed-
ding, a valuing, a possibility, a ‘risking,’ a demand.”9
Political love serves to indigenize music and locate it within Kenyan contexts
while also allowing artists to create music outside of the bounds of a society that
oen rigidly denes dierence. When artists delve deep into their neighborhoods,
critiquing poverty and inequalities, love is applied as a guiding principle. is
enthusiasm and commitment solidify the authenticity of practitioners and espouse
a basis for music-making that claims to better Kenyan society. During the emer-
gence of the genre in Kenya, Ukoo Flani Mau Mau (UFMM) established love as
a guiding element in their music, as their name stands for “Upendo Kwote, Ole
Wenu Ombeni Funzo La Aliyetuumba Njia Iwepo,” meaning “love everywhere,
woe unto you, seek the teachings of the creator for there to be a way.” Mickie
Koster observes that UFMM’s notions of love are tied to social change: “e group
[aimed] to help use love and the power of the Creator as a force for equality and
justice.”10 Many artists have come to reference upendo kwote (love everywhere) in
songs and everyday speech, so much so that it has become a cliché. e phrase’s
wide reach has led many to rely on the well-worn theme to provide homage to
UFMM’s work. During interviews, several artists phrase-dropped upendo kwote in
casual speech as a basic way of describing how their music is in conversation with
the culture of the underground. In so doing, these practitioners both acknowl-
edged UFMM as the inventor of political love and established upendo kwote as a
guiding principle that has created a sustaining culture.
Artists additionally use ideas of love for self-making, seeing themselves as
part of a larger global community. Woman rapper and spoken word artist Amora
insisted, “You don’t have to be Black or white to do hip hop. You don’t have to be a
certain tribe to do hip hop. Hip hop itself is a culture of its own... You’re a chick,
you’re a dude, you’re gay, you’re not gay; it doesn’t matter. As long as you have the
culture in you.”11 e music’s connection to U.S. blackness does not mean that
artists of other races are excluded, as many rappers envision a culture informed
by blackness, but that can and does comprise people of dierent races. Statements
like these exemplify how aliation and devotion to rap music and culture allow
artists to transcend how the state politicizes ethnicity and identity. Furthermore,
hip hop investments emerge from the artistic soul, causing a love dedicated to
resistance, artistic creativity, and enlightened consciousness.12 Self-worth is oen
measured in terms of how authentic an artist is, which may appear limiting, but
the impactful feelings of adoration that artists have for the music reect their value
as people who make culture. Amora’s sentiment seeks to address, but does not
settle, the problems that women face. Nevertheless, many share her opinions and
recognize how hip hop earnestly attempts to reconcile unequal social dierences.
Rappers root their enduring honor of music in their souls and then move beyond
the self toward community and diaspora.
Political love articulates political seriousness, creating credibility and legiti-
macy within the terrain of Nairobi music. To dispel the constant criticisms, they
proclaim, “I do it for the love.” With this phrase, along with upendo kwote, artists
disregard the claim that they copy American music, allowing them to insist on
their place within an imagined global music community. Some rappers attempt
to ght o imitation claims by stating that it is impossible to imitate an inherently
African style. Even for those who root hip hop as something that arrived exter-
nally, love is an indigenization device that allows them to argue that the music
is now Kenyan and is situated in the creative soul of artists. Many recognize that
they are viewed as imitators and mention their intrinsic aection for and partici-
pation in transnational rap culture to buer themselves from outside criticisms.
Such self-making is more than resisting disapproval; it is also tied to how one sees
oneself within larger social categories of Africanity, blackness, and Kenyanness.
Sue Timon raps in her (and Flamez’s) song “Ulimi,” that love is the basic element
that undergirds hip hop’s cultural mobilization: “Mi naifanya juu ya mapenzi /na
hii silaha mdomoni / kama kijana mkoloni” (I do (hip hop) out of love / with the
weapon in my mouth, this tongue / like a colonized boy/girl/youth).13 Timon sees
herself as a force resisting the legacies of colonial rule. Not wanting to ingest the
harmful ideologies of the remains of British domination, Timon fosters political
love to develop rhymes that resist. Lyrics like this undergird how rappers under-
stand their place as cultural practitioners in a postcolonial world.
Artists realize themselves as legitimate actors and employ love to counteract
claims that Kenyan rap is unimaginative mimicry and to reinforce their authentic-
ity and authority to enter and help create a global diaspora. e culture’s cultiva-
tion of love is used to solidify Kenya’s participation in revolutionary traditions that
, ,
exist within hip hop’s diasporic music. Underground rap is also juxtaposed with
the intentions of commercial music, which many rappers believe is void of mean-
ing. Evaredi explained the following in my discussion with him:
But underground hip hop, I can say, is like when you do it for the love. You do it from
your heart. Like you are doing it for the people. You’re doing it for the correct way.
Not basically because of the money. ... But when you say commercial music, it’s like
you’ll do it for some time, get your money, move on. Yeah.14 (emphasis mine)
To make his point, he compared his reasons for rapping to the motivations behind
mainstream music. Of course, artists in underground settings still need to make
money, which Evaredi acknowledged when I pressed the issue. Still, most rappers
do not want to abandon the principles of social change and activism to acquire
economic mobility. According to underground rappers, commercial artists are
vacuous and money-driven and cannot hold upendo kwote in their hearts. I also
asked many artists about the regular presence of commercial songs with socially
conscious messaging, which they laughed o, proclaiming that such songs do not
stie their critiques. Instead, mainstream artists who rap or sing about societal
problems are seen as eecing from the culture’s core values and are thus consid-
ered inauthentic, a topic that I address in chapter .
Hip hop’s ethic of love serves as a very localized answer to the continual reit-
erations of polarizing notions of ethnicity in Kenya. Ethnicity is not the prob-
lem, but rather the ways state actors have historically hijacked it to consolidate
political power, and this dynamic has long plagued the country. In the recent past,
for example, the postelection violence in – should be seen as a culmina-
tion of fracturing and enamed tensions rather than as a unique moment in time.
is violence marked the second term of Mwai Kibaki, who was sworn in amid a
highly disputable victory in December . at night, Kalenjin, Luo, and Luhya
groups, supposedly funded by Raila Odinga and William Ruto, began to attack
Kikuyu businesses in the Ri Valley.15 ese events started a series of retaliatory
attacks, whereby Kikuyu groups fought against Kalenjin, Luo, and Luhya militias,
committing acts of violence and killing people from those communities. Likewise,
Kalenjin, Luo, and Luhya militias and informal youth groups hunted down and
killed Kikuyus and burned houses and other buildings. Uhuru Kenyatta went on
trial at the ICC, charged with giving resources to groups like Mungiki, which is a
largely Kikuyu organization and street gang, to retaliate against Luo and Kalen-
jin communities. Likewise, Ruto’s allegations included funding Kalenjin groups to
purposely hunt down and kill Kikuyus.16 All charges were eventually dropped due
to witness intimidation and lack of evidence.17
Aer the bloodshed, artists famously came together to form the Hip Hop Par-
liament, using a call for love as the solution to how the country had been torn
apart.18 Angela Wainaina, Muki Garang, Judge, Buddha Blaze, Mwafrika, and
Roje Otieno were among the artists who convened and held concerts calling for
reconciliation and ending all brutalities. When former UN Secretary-General Ko
Annan arrived in Kenya to mediate a power-share between the two presidential
candidates, Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, the Hip Hop Parliament wrote and
delivered a Declaration of Unity to Annan.19 is action solidied how the artists
envisaged themselves as legitimate political actors whose power rested in their
separateness from the treacheries of the Kenyan state. e declaration espoused
that while leaders have fanned ethnic ames, rappers have long used their voices
to inspire commonality, equity, and welfare for others. eir solution was not to
privilege one ethnic language over the other but to promote Sheng as the o-
cial inclusive language of hip hop culture. ough spoken throughout the coun-
try by people of all ages, there are neighborhood-specic Shengs in Nairobi, and
lower-class urban young people are responsible for its consistent production of
new words.20 Sheng has come to signify poor urban youth, and its use in the docu-
ment arms its presence in hip hop culture. e document disdained violence
of any kind, stated that women and men stood as equals, and denounced what is
regularly referred to as “tribalism,” which is the pernicious manipulation of eth-
nicity for political and economic benet. Bluntly stated, the group’s campaign was
“Ukabila ni taifa killer” (Ethnicity is a nation killer), which may seem like a strong
statement. However, these artists responded to the crisis of the moment and how
political leaders have historically woven ethnicity into the practices of manipulat-
ing its populace. Like songs and music videos, the declaration was another hip hop
text originating from the underground, demonstrating the culture’s political seri-
ousness and exemplifying how rap practitioners oer solutions to social problems.
Rappers’ incorporation of their personal ethnic aliations in the music is a
careful project, especially because of the politicization of ethnicity. While many
use notions of Africanity and hip hop blackness to produce the commonalities of
love and diaspora, most rappers only reference their ethnic communities in their
music if doing so does not challenge their overall mission to promote lower-class
solidarities. Artists have long been aware of the volatile climate that surrounds eth-
nicity and power and are careful to ensure that their content does not contribute
to the politicization of dierence that has become too regular. Many oen avoid
discussing their identicatory markers if explicitly asked, as Esther Milu recounts
in her study. Rappers oen told her they were “Pan-African” or Mkenya (Kenyan)
or would not say.21 I did not ask this question in my research, yet many rappers vol-
unteered to state their ethnic community. In addition to seeing me as an unknow-
ing outsider, I attribute their openness to the fact that I did not explicitly ask about
where they were from, which may have led them to believe that I was unbothered
or unconcerned with the topic. It is possible that Milu’s direct questioning gave
the impression that she was attempting to form conclusions about artists based
on this social category, which caused the artists to avoid answering. Nonetheless,
Milu’s accounts highlight that artists want to be acknowledged for their contribu-
tions to Kenya’s music culture, as well as a larger Pan-African ethos, rather than be
, ,
enclosed in a set of historical indicators, especially given the tense ethnic climate
that waxes and wanes around elections and other political moments.22
Since ethnicity can oen be seen as a marker of privilege or, alternatively, as
an indicator of disempowerment, celebrating an ethnic identity is a tricky, but
not impossible, task in the underground. One imperative that a shared diaspora
calls for is not the elimination of dierence but rather the expulsion of ethnic
particularities that can fracture a community. For example, artists from Kikuyu
communities are much less likely to reference their ethnicity in music, due to the
history of state power. Out of ve presidents and the over forty ethnic groups in
Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, his son Uhuru, and Mwai Kibaki are from Kikuyu commu-
nities. Daniel arap Moi and newly elected president William Ruto are Kalenjin.23
Since independence, presidents have created ethnic blocs of power, monopoliz-
ing resources and placing allies from their communities in high governmental
positions. Jomo Kenyatta’s Kikuyu nationalist state enabled politically connected
elites to buy former white settler land and take government positions, arguably
resulting in what Jeni Klugman calls the “kikuyuization” of the country.24 Kibaki
created what was termed the “Mount Kenya Maa,” a small group of politicians
he turned to for support from the Kikuyu, as well as the related Meru and Embu
communities.25 Uhuru Kenyatta grew his family’s secreted wealth by solidifying
monopolies on milk and creating opportunities for income generation in timber,
banking, and construction.26 It should be known that Moi conducted a similar
practice by enabling land sales and providing government posts to connected and
loyal Kalenjins. ese exercises of ethnicized state power bleed into social
and economic spaces, as evidenced by several instances of violent ethnic clashes and
conicts.27 erefore, what it means to be Kikuyu in public space and the historic
and politicized meanings of such identication can be fraught, even for those from
working-class backgrounds, and this translates to many artists avoiding the men-
tion of Kikuyu ethnicity. Moreover, regardless of the community that rappers hail
from, many avoid this topic because of the divisiveness it engenders and the pos-
sibility that it undercuts both an aspired egalitarianism and a political love.
To promote love, artists must nd a workable balance in which the celebra-
tion or naming of ethnicity does not feed into the destabilizing ethnic atmosphere
that oen materializes in Kenya. In some circumstances, they are willing to use
ethnicity in their music. For example, Judge’s song “Mad Jaluo” references his Luo
identication, and he also has drawn on blackness, as his former group with his
brother was Black Duo. e duo Wakamba Wawili, of which rapper Agano is a
part, named themselves aer their community, as the name means “two Kam-
bas.” Rapper Ekori oen raps in Turkana and seeks to resolve entrenched con-
icts in the northeastern region. Many of his songs have addressed struggles over
resources among Turkana, Pokot, and Daasanach communities.
While some artists do identify as Black or African and as a part of their ethnic
community, I believe that spending too much time on how they identify does not
give credence to the more accurate and imperative questions of what they do, how
they perform, and what they rap about. Underground Nairobi rappers oen seek
out ideas of blackness and Africanity, typically alongside their respective ethnic
identities. ese explorations can be described as what Jennifer Nash calls “aec-
tive politics” or how “bodies are organized around intensities, longings, desires,
temporalities ... and how these aects produce political movements.”28 Nash uses
aective politics to enunciate the “Black feminist love-politics” that have long been
present in the U.S., similar to the deep collective sentiment of political love found
in Kenya’s hip hop. Both focus on what culture workers do rather than on how
they identify. e motivation to recognize people as makers of serious, creative,
and subversive works allows one to see artists beyond their identities, oen not the
artists’ focus. Instead, concentrating on what practitioners do allows one to regard
them as holistic producers of music culture.
DIASPORA MOVES
In Nairobi hip hop, diasporic blackness enables the ow of music from the U.S. to
Africa, and then from Kenya outward. It is the xture that artists use to tell stories
about the specicities of Kenyan cultural life. Embodied performances that exude
diaspora are oen indecipherable, unpredictable, and rhythmic, allowing rappers
to do their part to create an imagined global community. Here, I bring together
Soyica Diggs Colbert and Paul Zeleza to consider how the music actualizes dias-
pora. Zeleza proposes that the musical relationships between Africa and its diaspo-
ras are best described not by a dynamic and contemporary (western) diaspora and
a xed and always borrowing Africa but as historically multidirectional cultural
exchanges within the continent, between diasporas and the continent, and within
diasporas.29 Zeleza’s argument that Africa participates in developing dynamic and
diverse musical styles in conversation with other continental music and those out-
side Africa allows us to consider how diaspora in Nairobi hip hop appears as a vig-
orous performative method, not a passive recipient practice. Soyica Diggs Colbert
explores how various U.S. Black culture workers use embodied performance in the
post–civil rights era to contest the ways that blackness marks social and physical
death and to create notions of freedom and political sensibilities.30 Colbert identi-
es how performers and writers foster “webs of aliation,” which draw on past
performances to articulate desire and liberation. Colbert’s theory of “webs of ali-
ation” is useful in thinking about how hip hop embodies ideas of diaspora. While
rappers facilitate musical networks that connect themselves with Kenyan history,
they are also invested in contemporary meaning-making that pulls from U.S.
blackness, past and present Pan-Africanism, and a variety of the culture’s signi-
ers, places, music styles, and artists. Placing Colbert and Zeleza together, I iden-
tify how embodiments in Kenyan underground music reveal a vibrant assertion
, ,
of ideas of freeness through movement by proering paradigms of diaspora and
African agency.
e movement-based themes in “Still Strong” create Nairobi as a global city
that artists use to demonstrate diaspora and Pan-Africanism. is song is by Nafsi
Huru, white American rapper Kevlexicon, and Kenyan R&B singer NJE. e
music video displays scenes outside the Kenyatta International Conference Cen-
tre (KICC), which sits on Harambee Road near Jogoo House, the Kenya National
Archives, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), and
the upscale Stanley Hotel. e building’s architecture is slim and tall, with a lid
at the very top. Several governmental oces are located at the KICC, but it also
symbolizes Kenya’s internationality, oen hosting concerts by African artists,
entrepreneurial events, and academic conferences. e KICC is located in the
middle of the Central Business District and is a symbol of Kenya’s participation
in the global economy. In the music video, the structure is the backdrop to young
people roller-skating in circular formations, hanging out, smiling, laughing, sitting
together, and bouncing back and forth as Nafsi and Kevlexicon rap. ere are sev-
eral other artists in the video, for example, Judge, Amora, and Karpchizzy. When
I spoke with him years aer the project, Nafsi fondly mentioned that watching it
reminds him of a family reunion.31
e “Still Strong” video is comparably more leisured than other texts about
hood life, and even still, it pairs the necessary political seriousness with the vital-
ity of ludicity. When artists make music videos demonstrating harsh realities,
. Rapper Nafsi Huru in the trailer for the “Still Strong” music video. Screenshot
by author. Source: Kevlexicon, “Still Strong—Musa Aka Nafsi Huru and Kevlexicon,” YouTube,
January , , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMQSVPPgc.
their embodiments, in turn, appear comparatively more hardened and armored,
conveying that they are equipped to navigate the streets and to say something
meaningful through lyrics about life in poor settings. In the “Still Strong” video,
however, the rappers are not in the hood, and their embodiments appear more
leisured and carefree, but their creative objectives continue to exist within the
lexicon of underground activist-themed music. At the beginning of the video, a
ash of light appears, and the scene transitions from a color setting in front of the
KICC to a black-and-white blurred shot with ve or so men throwing up Black
power sts, which summons a history of activism that is still marshaled for pres-
ent-day confrontations of injustice. e men’s faces are indistinct and grainy, but
the gesture is clear. e juxtaposition of roller-skating and clenched sts indicates
that the force of the song and the playful themes belong alongside each other.
While Black power sts evoke a focused solemnity, these clenched hands appear
within a context of ludicity. e raised sts are reminders that playfulness is always
indexed within the intensity of struggle in the underground. In this video, resis-
tance resides within the context of joy and pleasure, with its momentary and eet-
ing reminders of a more expansive and transnational struggle for the freedom of
Afrodiasporic peoples.
“Still Strong” tells the story of how Nairobi holds unique diasporic elements.
It has a smooth melodic ow and does not contain the sense of urgency that we
hear in other songs that visually, performatively, sonically, and orally recall the
inequalities of ghetto life. NJE delivers synthesized reggae vocals, and together
with Nafsi Huru and Kevlexicon’s raps, there is a harmonic union of dierent
voices. Nafsi adds to the diasporic tendencies in verse: “Dunia nzima utazunguka
kwote utatupata tupo tupo, pale pale, mambo yetu, yale yale! Irie! Irie!”32 Some of
the force of this line is lost in the English translation. For instance, the last part
has alliterations and rhymes and is best appreciated when listening to the song:
“tupo tupo, pale pale, mambo yetu, yale yale! Irie! Irie!” Nafsi raps quickly using
the rhyming words pale and yale, participating in the African diasporic practice
of repeating words for emphasis. e lyric roughly translates to “You’ll go around
the whole world and nd us at the same place! Our stu! Same stu! Irie! Irie!”
e repetitive, alliterative nature of tupo, pale, and yale, along with the quick deliv-
ery, makes the lyric dicult to understand, almost indecipherable, yet it is also a
creative and witty moment in the song. Dunia nzima, which translates to “whole
world,” appears in the same line as “Irie! Irie!” Irie is a well-known Jamaican or
Rastafarian word meaning “I am at peace with myself.” It is also a greeting that
means “I am ne/well/cool.” It is similar to several Swahili responses to greetings
used in Kenya, such as poa, ti, and mzuri / nzuri. Nafsi’s use of irie is a signier
of Jamaican music’s long inuence in Kenya and the similar cultural position of
reggae and underground rap.33 Both genres are known as types of hood music that
signify working-class people and experiences, and artists occasionally do collab-
orative work with reggae musicians and the genres share venues in Nairobi.
, ,
During his raps, Nafsi rhythmically shis back and forth to the beat of the song
while rotating around the camera to promote his armative condence and disaf-
fected coolness. His movements are rhythmic, engaging, and energetic, wherein
the embodiment exudes an unfazed deportment from any external pressures seek-
ing to criticize him. He condently proclaims “Mi ni mtemi!” (I spit, or I ow).34
e force of the moment is in the way he articulates “mtemi,” placing the emphasis
on te, following Swahili grammar.35 As he says the phrase, he lunges slightly at the
camera with his chest out and then bobs quickly back and forth before moving
to the next lyric. Nafsi’s legitimacy is born from and within his oratured rap ow,
wherein his mastery of style connects him to a community of rappers in Nairobi
and an imagined diaspora. He maintains a cool control, putting irie into action. He
draws on similarities between irie and Kenyan words, thus making irie local and a
part of the local and global formations of hip hop. e music video’s camera moves
around Nafsi, allowing him to own the space that his lyrics and performances
produce. At times, it is more important for the lyrics, rhyme, or beat to induce
aective pleasure than for the song to embody a set of complete ideas. Nafsi’s lyr-
ics transmit the common objective in rap culture, which is not to be comfort-
ably legible but instead to create artful expressions open to interpretation. e use
of dierent elements like Sheng, Jamaica’s irie, and Black references creates what
Glissant calls Creolization, which is “a perpetual movement of linguistic interpen-
etrability.”36 is intentional untranslatability, whether in the body or lyrics, is not
the same as unknowability. Instead, these enactments of clever sharpness converge
Pan-Africanism and hip hop blackness and demonstrate the capacity to use rap
bodies in tune with music, thus authorizing themselves as cultural producers.
ese performativities are globally recognizable in and out of rap communities,
with their meanings not easily describable. Imani Perry writes, “incomprehensi-
bility is ... a protective strategy” in hip hop, stating that “the lack of clarity ...
represents struggle against the repressiveness of traditional literariness in terms
of content, censorship, and more important, in terms of the limitations tradition
imposes on structural innovation.”37 When the power of corporeality appears
inside the music, these performances open possibilities that perhaps defy straight-
forward description. Practitioners aim for this incomprehensibility by inserting
hidden meanings, rapping quickly, or shiing the meanings of words. is inten-
tional obscurity appears in gestures and stances, whereby most rappers seek to
dodge the normative mechanisms that are in place in Kenya. Bodily movements
that aim for intentional obscur ity, such as Nafsi’s, allow practitioners to resist, coun-
ter, and avoid repressive political and economic conditions, if only temporarily
or symbolically.
e motility of diaspora is put forth as a solution to state corruption and vio-
lence and the poverty the artists attribute to inept governance. Its commitment
to educating listeners about social issues that impact vulnerable communities is
never far from oratured ludicity and the diasporic articulations in Nairobi rap.
e pleasure that Nafsi nds in his movements exists in the context of societal dif-
culty. Kevlexicon raps the following:
Robbing the Ministry of Education is dumb and politics is get a buck and
run /
MPs wana mashilingi mingi lakini wananchi broke (MPs have a lot of money
while the citizens are broke) /
Nje ya mtaa watoto bila hope, kuna stress kwamba tunavuta cess for re-cess
(Outside in the hood, children are hopeless, there is stress, we smoke cess
[taxes] as we are taxed again and again)38
Kevlexicon’s lyrics are meant to speak to the locality of incompetent Kenyan gov-
ernance, used as a basis of political solidarity across boundaries. Halifu Osumare
names lyrics like these “connective marginalities,” which exemplify the “reality of
extant social inequalities that link youths internationally through hip-hop cul-
t u r e .” 39 e need for diasporic connections oen begins with a common dissent
about local governance, poor economic conditions, and the state’s apathy toward
disenfranchised youth. roughout the video, Kevlexicon’s lyrics are accompa-
nied by footage of beaming and laughing young people who demonstrate freedom
and joy through diasporic movements that work to counteract the realities of a
failed state polity and their economic disempowerment. Joy in the midst of strug-
gle is not a less mighty form of seriousness; it is instead one more way rappers
forge a method of love and diaspora within harsh conditions.
Diaspora does not mean the space is always exclusively Black or African. Kev-
lexicon is a white rapper, historian, and lmmaker from New Jersey who has col-
laborated with other underground practitioners.40 For instance, in the music video
“Tumechoka,” he teamed up with several Kenyan artists, including Ekori, L-Ness,
and Skobo. It is notable that in a cultural cityspace where rappers are regularly
tagged as imitators, Kevlexicon, as someone who is not Black or African, is never
labeled as such, which is a testimony to how privileged whiteness allows him to
escape the identier of mimic. Daphne Brooks, who writes about U.S. Black wom-
en’s music, is instructive in identifying this dynamic: “at which is ‘authentic’
and ‘original’ is made by white men. at which is mimetic and lacks innovation is
made by everyone else.”41 Kevlexicon’s place in hip hop reminds us how the marker
of cultural mimic is leveled toward those who are already rendered marginalized
or othered and rarely toward those who sustain or embody power. It is also impor-
tant to note that white, light-skinned, and racially ambiguous people are regularly
present as extras and collaborators both in mainstream Kenyan music videos and
in the underground world. In songs such as “Still Strong,” what comes through
most forcefully is a spirit of collaboration and an understanding of shared poli-
tics among artists. ey all uphold the powerful testimonies conveyed through
love and political seriousness, and for these artists, the fact that Kevlexicon is
white and American is less important than a set of mutual political beliefs.
, ,
e song and video “Amandla” illustrate a transnational collaboration that
articulates a hip hop Pan-Africanism, arming the same diasporic articulations of
movement and openness in “Still Strong.” “Amandla” accomplishes several objec-
tives: it highlights the dynamic linkages of diaspora by explicitly recuperating U.S.
blackness as a part of Africanity; it sees Kenyan music traditions, oen regarded
as static and xed, as part of the globality of hip hop; and it presents diaspora as a
symbolic remedy to the conditions of the poverty of informal settlements. ese
are instances of what Nadine George-Graves calls “diasporic spidering,” expressed
as “the multidirectional process by which people of African descent dene their
lives [and] the lifelong ontological gathering of information by going out into the
world and coming back to the self.”42
e song’s artists are Mic Crenshaw from the U.S., Khusta from South Africa,
and Ran-D, Judge, and MC Bagol, all from Kenya. e song is part of the Afrikan
Hiphop Caravan, a collective of artists from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Senegal,
and the U.S., among other countries. One of the founders of the Caravan is Soundz
of the South (SOS), a collective that describes itself as antisexist, anarchist, and anti-
racist. Beginning in , SOS, along with other activist groups in Africa rooted in
resistance to neoliberalism, consumer culture, and authoritarianism, poured these
philosophies into various phases that worked to provoke their hip hop activism.
ese artists have traveled around the continent, providing concerts and produc-
ing music videos, exercising “horizontal organising based on principles of direct
participatory democracy.”43 In Nairobi, the Caravan put on shows in at the
Goethe-Institut and at the British Council. In , the Caravan released an
album that cited several social issues: the xenophobic violence in South Africa
and Mozambique, U.S. police brutality against Black people, the disappeared anti-
Mugabe journalist Itai Dzamara, and the charges against the rappers and activ-
ists who have come to be known as the Angola .44 e Nairobi rappers’ alliance
assists the Afrikan Hiphop Caravan in spreading awareness about themes of
political seriousness and diaspora. e music video’s shots are mainly from Kenya,
but the lyrics and the rappers’ embodied practices work to display the Caravan’s
Pan-African sentiment. To emphasize cross-continental comradeship, the artists
also proclaim in repetition “Amandla Owethu” (or “NgaWethu”), the widely used
anti-apartheid South African Nguni phrase, meaning “Power to the People,” “Our
Power,” or “Black Power.”45 e continued usage of this term across southern Afri-
can states marks the relevance of the morphing struggle for Black rights in a post-
apartheid and racial capitalist context.
Diaspora appears in “Amandla” by negotiating Kenyan societal conceptions
of blackness. Mic Crenshaw raps during his verse, “Black American, I’m Afri-
kan (African)! I’m on the caravan!”46 Black American is a term oen used by
Kenyans and other Africans to describe African Americans. Many Kenyans have
explained to me that “Black American” is an intentional term meant to exclude
U.S.-born Black people from the category of “African.” However, hip hop refuses
such designations, and Mic Crenshaw turns the term on its head. While in wider
Kenyan society, U.S. blackness may be antithetical to Africanness, in the culture
these two terms can overlap, touch, and come together. Mic Crenshaw leans on a
shared commonality of hip hop love and political seriousness that allows artists to
address the claim that Black people are not considered African in Kenyan society.
Instead of avoiding the term “Black American” to proclaim his Africanness, Mic
Crenshaw uses it alongside “African” and “caravan” to announce his ideological
and physical travel. Because “Black American” is exible enough to acquire new
signications, he easily ips the phrase’s meaning to include it within the frame-
work of caravan politics.
“Amandla” addresses how what is regarded as Kenyan or African traditional
music is also constitutive of a Pan-Africanism and hip hop diaspora. e nyatiti,
a Luo stringed instrument, can be seen and heard throughout the song. It is com-
mon practice for Kenyan practitioners to embrace elements of Kenyan culture that
are deemed “traditional” and “ethnic” to exemplify the exibility of both hip hop
and other types of Kenyan music. Here, the video accomplishes what Paul Zeleza
calls for: “not to freeze [African music] in temporal boxes in which Africa’s inu-
ences on diasporan music are conned exclusively to the past.”47 Not only is hip
hop rendered African, but so is the nyatiti made contemporary and active, dis-
rupting the notion that noncommercial and ethnicized music is static and per-
manently localized. Stringed instruments in rap can also be heard when artists
freestyle over guitar sounds. In the lm Ni Wakati , analyzed in the last section
of this chapter, and in Michael Wanguhu’s other lm on the underground scene,
. “Amandla” music video, featuring (le to right) MC Bagol, Ran-D, and Mic
Crenshaw. Screenshot by author. Source: Nomadik Studio, “ ‘Amandla’ Ft. Khusta, Mic Crenshaw,
Ran-D, Judge and MC Bagol,” YouTube, December , , https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=usamqjWxtyk.
, ,
Hip Hop Colony, artists are lmed rapping or freestyling to guitar music. Firm beats
and weighty bass traditionally mark hip hop. In Kenyan music, while computer-
generated beats are widely utilized, rappers regularly use the guitar. As discussed
in ch apter , guitar music, such as Benga and Congolese rumba, has a long history in
Kenya. Additionally, other chordophones, such as the nyatiti and litungu, have
been used in Kenyan music both before and aer the introduction of the guitar. In
fact, East African knowledge and usage of these and other instruments have made
the guitar a beautifully viable source of music-making.
e presence of the nyatiti demonstrates Kenyan hip hop’s indigenization prac-
tices, also exhibiting that the project of diaspora is not always transnational and
outward-looking. Oen, the reclamation of African and Black humanity in dia-
sporic projects means that artists must draw lines, or webs, according to Soyica
Diggs Colbert, in a multitude of directions. Some connections are made inter-
continentally, others are made across oceans, and still, other critical lines are
drawn within Kenya itself. e nyatiti is positioned near the artists on the ground
when they are rapping, and MC Bagol plays the instrument intermittently. Given
the history of string music and its frequent incorporation in rapping, the video
expresses that hip hop owns its place within the many genres of Kenyan music.
Because the music is viewed as a consistent other, linking it to various genres is
one way it sturdily asserts its presence within the catalogs of Kenyan sounds. is
othering appeared during a television interview on the show Culture Hub with MC
Bagol. Halfway into a short conversation about MC Bagol’s life, nyatiti musician-
ship, and career goals, the presenter asked a platitudinous question comparing
American and Kenyan styles: “What is your message to the other young folk that
we see, especially here in Kenya, who are imitating a lot of the hip hop that is in the
west?” MC Bagol, partly refusing to fall for the trap of setting Kenyan music on a
moral high ground against western (i.e., American and therefore African Ameri-
can) forms, replied:
Well, okay, I don’t have anything against hip hop. Hip hop is a powerful music. It is
about the African man in the diaspora. e Black man. He is expressing the issues
that are aecting him in the diaspora. So hip hop is a positive culture. I can say it
is a good culture. So, we have to enrich it more. We have to enrich it more. So, my
message to all the young artists that are coming up, the hip hop artists in Africa that
are coming up, I just like to say, they can do hip hop, but let’s enrich it. Bring it to the
motherland. Bring it back to the roots and have some conscious messages.48
Bagol continued to note, nodding to Haile Selassie, that artists must focus not
only on economic empowerment but also on spiritual fulllment.49 ough Bagol’s
comments partly fold into the notions of a awed American music, he also recog-
nizes the cultural sameness and commonality of struggle that exists among Black
peoples, or, specically for him, among Black men. Like Mic Crenshaw, Bagol
briey places blackness alongside Africanity in a unifying gesture. Black and
African may be two opposing subjectivities in Kenyan society at large, but here,
in the underground, the concepts are brought together in a gesture of sameness.
In hip hop, Black and African are not necessarily synonyms, but they are still two
similar characteristics whose nets are cast in diering directions and meet for a
common purpose.
Espousals of diaspora forge a mutual recognition of the similarities that
Africana people share across various borders. Jean Muteba Rahier and Percy
C. Hintzen write that “white supremacy is ... at the center of black misrecog-
nition,” and if this is so, then diaspora works to “[render] the ‘space’ of collec-
tive self-recognition and self-consciousness.”50 A hip hop diaspora produces a
relationality: an imagined camaraderie wherein Africana people do not render
those who look like them as “other.” In this version of diaspora, artists resist the
disarticulating regimes of colonialism and slavery as well as their aerlives while
also speculating on unity based on shared perspectives. e idea of diaspora, of
seeing others as not dissimilar to oneself, is a mutual recognition that the other
is not an other aer all.
e traversal of this musical African convoy of the Caravan from hood to hood,
from South Africa to Zimbabwe, and then to Kenya and beyond, allows for the
growth of a music-based activism that sees the hood as a diasporic site. Ran-D
rhymes in “Amandla” and contributes to the idea that the moving caravan is an
answer to a seemingly inescapable social connement:
. “Amandla” music video, featuring (le to right) MC Bagol, Ran-D, and Mic
Crenshaw. Screenshot by author. Source: Nomadik Studio, “ ‘Amandla’ Ft. Khusta, Mic Crenshaw,
Ran-D, Judge and MC Bagol,” YouTube, December , , https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=usamqjWxtyk.
, ,
Jamii iko locked ndani ya poverty, maisha mabaya (e community is locked in pov-
erty, bad life) /
Wamebow down to pressure, domestication (ey have bowed down to pressure,
domestication) /
e slave master kupitia Intimidation Avenue kufunga (e slave master through
Intimidation Avenue closes [to close]) /
Kuwafanya wajinga, wameziunda concentration camps ndani ya mtaa (To make them
stupid, they have built concentration camps in the hood)51
Here, Ran-D states that powerful forces, referred to as “the slave master,” have
domesticated or held down the oppressed, who are forced to accept their positions.
Some artists refer to the downtrodden as being unknowing or, in this case, stupid.
Ran-D positions himself as knowledgeable and capable of providing answers to
those who are miseducated. Normalized ableism does appear in hip hop music.
For example, the King Kaka song “Wajinga Nyinyi,” meaning “Y’all stupid,”
which is examined in the next chapter, encourages people to hold the political
system accountable. Rappers place themselves as responsible for liing a veil that
those in power have placed over the impoverished populace. Calling for political
consciousness is reasonable, yet the accusation of stupidity does not exist without
an ableist and elitist indictment of the working class and poor persons as being
unaware and naïve.
e settings of the “Amandla” video also mark the ghetto as a project of social
connement. e video was shot in the middle-class area of Hurlingham. In one
part, there is footage just south of Hurlingham from a moving vehicle capturing
a scene from Lang’ata Road. Kibera, known to be Africa’s largest informal settle-
ment neighborhood and where the “Looking Up” video was shot (see chapter
), can briey be seen in the background. Rather than heading away from the
city and hood, the caravan heads toward both because the hood is one stop that
it will always make. In some traditional ideas of diaspora, homeland, and moth-
erland, Africa is portrayed as ahistorically positive. Far from the land of queens
and kings or collective village life and animals, the hood is a marker of hip hop
diaspora and transnationality. e space and visual sight of ghettos operate as an
indigenizing mechanism that locates the music inside Kenya, and with the help of
the caravan, the ghetto functions as one stop along the Pan-African path.
e caravan-as-matatu is quite apposite given the vehicle’s sturdy connections
to rap music culture. Songs like Nazizi and Wyre’s old school classic “Kenyan Girl
/ Kenyan Boy” (), Baby T’s playful and upbeat song about sexual pleasure,
“Dandiwa” (Jumped On, ), and Tunji’s ashy song “Mat za Ronga” (Mata-
tus of [Ongata] Rongai, ) are just a few ways the matatu gures prominently
in songs. Octopizzo’s proclamations of “Namba Nane” (Number ) in his music
as a nod to the matatu route line to Kibera and Evaredi’s use of the matatu
route line in his clothing and music as a marker of the way to Embakasi are other
examples. Working from Evan Mwangi and Wanjiru Mbure, who call the vehicle
a “fugitive institution,” I see the matatu as symbolic of diaspora through its pro-
pensity to transgress borders in hip hop.52 In “Amandla,” what is important is the
matatu’s symbolism of a Pan-African caravan that joins people together across
geographic space.
e complicated interventions of “Still Strong” and “Amandla” echo Paul Zele-
za’s note that “movement, it could be argued then, in its literal and metaphori-
cal senses, is at the heart of the diasporic condition.”53 is theme of movement
shores up how hip hop prioritizes bodies that are able-bodied, whether in dance
or rhyme. Unlike “Still Strong,” where only skilled roller-skaters participate in
the performance, using the matatu guratively makes the caravan available to
those who cannot walk their journey. e matatu conveys the possibilities of an
inclusive caravanned diaspora, wherein one is not required to be physically able-
bodied to partake in the transit. Moreover, “Amandla” and “Still Strong” illustrate
that representations of diaspora are produced mostly by cisgender men, resulting
in its masculinization, however unintentional.
Although the diaspora in “Amandla” only includes men, the translocal articu-
lations are dynamic and still unfolding. In fact, in the larger project of the Afri-
kan Hip-Hop Caravan, women rappers such as Mama C (who I prole in the last
section of this chapter) are on the album in other songs. In “Amandla,” Ran-D,
. Grati artist in the “Amandla” music video. Screenshot by author. Source:
Nomadik Studio, “ ‘Amandla’ Ft. Khusta, Mic Crenshaw, Ran-D, Judge and MC Bagol,” YouTube,
December , , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usamqjWxtyk.
, ,
Khusta, Mic Crenshaw, and Judge can be seen spitting their verses in front of the
mic in the studio. As they rap, they hold up their recently completed and “not-
yet-memorized” bars, reading from either cellphones or paper. During Judge’s rap,
there is a cut to shots of a man grati artist painting a collage, which includes an
open book with a tree growing out of it and an image of an African woman on
the mic. ese practitioners are all in process, embodying their purpose while
remaining open to the possibility of something dierent. ese shots remind those
watching that practitioners are always putting pen to paper; they are still explor-
ing the directions of their paint cans. Such embodiment practices beckon toward
continual newness, highlighting what Nadine George-Graves calls “performativity
in ux.”54
THE DIASPORIC THUG
Kenyan artists cite U.S. Black themes in the music, but they do not use one of
the most popular global gures in rap, the gangsta or thug. Hip hop is both
a magnet and a lter for global racial politics, pulling in and sorting out ideas
of blackness and Africanity that t into the music and respond to Kenyan societal
beliefs. As such, many grapple with the gangsta or thug idiom and how it confers
blackness, primarily by calling it into question and ultimately rejecting it as unus-
able for projects of diaspora, political love, and seriousness. Evaredi’s music video
“Ukweli” (Truth) in this section illustrates that the reference to the thug must be
fed through notions of political seriousness for it to be viable. For most artists
social consciousness is a driving force for their music, and incorporating what is
largely seen as a gangsta or thug aesthetic into their art would mean straying from
their mission. Kenyan, and indeed many African, artists disassociate from the g-
ure of the thug or gangsta to mark their music as socially useful and valuable.55
In the U.S., the thug concept has been substantively reclaimed in hip hop and
is a continuation of the bad man and bad nigga aesthetic long present in Black
popular culture.56 e gure eschews formal economies for high-risk quick money
and has open heterosexual exploits that oen border on or fully embrace misogy-
noir and sexism.57 e U.S. thug is usually cast as the venerated antihero outlaw in
music and lm.
In Kenya, the thug has accumulated a somewhat dierent meaning, and the g-
ure is generally despised. e idea of the thug emerged during colonialism, when
white authorities used the term to describe young African men in a fast-develop-
ing urban Nairobi who supposedly did not want to work in formal economies but
would rather steal and cause havoc to the colonial social order. During the Emer-
gency, it quickly became a word to describe the ctitiously inherent barbarous
nature of the forest ghters.58 For example, S. M. Shamsul Alam cites a state-
run Voice of Kenya pamphlet, “e Kikuyu Tribe and Mau Mau: Some Factors
Causing the Rise of Mau Mau,” describing why people would feel compelled to join
the ghters. One reason was “Little of family or clan authority and no change for the
young male to prove his manhood except in chivalry, thuggery, and reversion to
primitive savagery.”59 During colonialism and independence transitions, it was a
racialized term to mark out the nonconforming African, and it then entered the
mainstream Kenyan lexicon as a class-based description conferred on men who
are apparently invested in crime instead of legitimate work. ough most Kenyans
might not view the Mau Mau as thugs, the term itself has remained, as well as a
societal willingness to enter people into that category. In the current Kenyan news,
broadcasters speak of men who rob violently or extort money from businesses as
being thugs, and it is common to hear broadcasters make statements such
as “police killed two thugs.”60 ese are oen extrajudicial murders and are seen as
easy solutions to the rife problem of gang or cartel violence in informal settlement
areas in Nairobi. Such executions are meant to send messages to gangs, who com-
munity members oen despise for the power they hold over residents as a result of
their violence. Unlike in the U.S., there are typically no widespread romanticized
notions of the gangster in Kenya; the term is mostly only used to describe people
who rob with violence and occasionally kill people in the process. Rappers are,
therefore, hesitant to identify themselves as gangstas or thugs in such an arena.
For example, in our conversations, Judge dierentiated much of U.S. hip hop
from African styles and argued that the subject of a song matters: a Kenyan rap-
per cannot discuss things that fall outside of cultural norms. Judge noted how in
American songs, a rapper can “diss their mother,” but in Africa, one’s music will
not sell with lyrics about parental criticism. In Kenya, there is a consistent desire
for artists to create music that is deemed “positive.” Judge lamented that gangsta
rap lies far from his creative purview:
ere’s some people who will rap about violence and people will rap about killing
each other, you know. And music, I normally believe that it has a very big inspiration
whereby if you say something, you don’t know it, but someone will be listening to
that music, and he or she is in that situation whereby you can react or whatever. He
or she is listening to—because I normally believe ... music ... touches some other
parts of the brain.61
Judge’s comments notably tell how artists parse through U.S. hip hop as they
engage in their citational practices. As mentioned, he participated in “Amandla.”
roughout his music, he has drawn on notions of blackness, naming his group
Black Duo, and in chapter , I analyze the song “Rap kwa Mic,” which samples
from U.S. artists Talib Kweli and Bahamadia. He, like others, is hyperaware that
society views the music through the lens of the gangsta or thug, which many argue
does not capture the full diversity of rap culture. I asked many rappers about the
general reception of hip hop in Kenya, and Nafsi Huru immediately discussed how
the cultural othering of the music comes from people’s perceptions of gangsta rap.
He disagreed with this association, explaining that he does not see himself as a
, ,
gangsta rapper and has grown frustrated at the constant association between hip
hop and gangsta rap.
RP: How does Kenyan society view hip hop?
Nafsi Huru: ere are some people, like parents, who don’t really love hip hop. ey
think it’s like for gangsters or for people who do drugs or something like
that. ey don’t see the positive side of it. But I think with time, they are
going to understand what we are doing, and they will get to follow us.
RP: And where do they get that perception from?
Nafsi Huru: I think it’s just a conception because people who do hip hop are ener-
getic, and we have swag and things like that. So, they, society, expect
you to go to school, you dress ocial and things like that, and you just
go to work in a corporate company . . . When you are doing hip hop,
when they haven’t heard your lyrics, .. . they stereotype you to being
someone who doesn’t understand what he is doing.62
Nafsi asserted that perceptions of the music originate from how rappers per-
form the culture, such as through swag and clothing styles, which signies the thug
or gangsta for nondevotees. Nafsi stated that people who dislike rap do so without
listening to the lyrics, meaning that the assumptions nonlisteners make are based
on a disengagement with the music. Social norms, including how to act, how to
dress, and where to work, propose that there are certain behaviors deemed suit-
able, and rap is continually measured against these actions. Artists rebel against
social norms, which oen manifests as generational and class-based resistance.
His mention of parental dislike of rap exemplies how age dierences are inu-
enced by how people navigate American inuences. When hip hop rst started,
it was a youth music, and globally, it has still retained this notion, even though its
y-year permanence now means that many popular artists across the globe who
pioneered the genre are well beyond middle age. In Kenya, parents disapprove of
their children becoming rappers because of specic cultural expectations around
what it means to become an adult. Many ethnic communities in Kenya have cir-
cumcision rites for boys, specically for young teenagers, aer which they become
men and assume certain responsibilities. Due to cultural and historical factors,
including how the colonial and postcolonial states have hijacked circumcision for
their aims, there exists an entire discourse surrounding manhood transitions in
Kenyan society.63 While the artists I spoke to never elaborated on this as a reason
for their parents’ disapproval, circumcision discourse rests securely inside of the
dierentiations between youth and adulthood, specically for many cismen.
Although few will admit it outright, rappers do care about how they are per-
ceived. e sustained resistance to social norms that the culture celebrates has lim-
its, and the goal for all artists is that some elements of the political urgency of their
music resonate with larger society. Judge implied that external societal perceptions
of hip hop are tied to what themes rappers avoid.
Like here in Kenya ... people have been thinking like hip hop is for gangsters, you
know? ... Let’s say if you are doing hip hop . . . they normally expect that you to start
doing and saying the “f-word.” Or the “b-word.” And start being hood, and start like
putting some dreads on your head, and be like, ah, you’re a bad boy?64
Judge’s description exemplies how rap carries negative signiers: if an artist were
to “be hood” and wear locks (or dreads or dreadlocks), they would be associ-
ated with gangsta rap. Of course, such meanings carry local connotations as well.
Locks have long been seen as nonnormative and improper in Kenya. Only in the
past een or so years have large numbers of middle-class men and women in
Nairobi begun to wear them. However, these styles are heavily rened and sym-
metrical, thus making them ideologically distant from the large and uncultivated
locks historically associated with Mau Mau ghters and also with Rastafarians and
Mungiki groups.65 While these organizations have a variety of reputations, with
the Mau Mau being remembered with recognition for its contribution to indepen-
dence, the hairstyle still conjures up notions of useless rebellion.
e cultural location of rap in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa relates to its pejo-
rative gangsta association. Nondevotees of the music see it as reecting a blind
western mimicry, the appropriation of a harmful pejorative lifestyle full of empty
violence and meaningless consumerism. Rap music’s supposed inability to gen-
erate meaning outside of its commodity status and its rebelliousness and social
deviance oen clash with established modes of respectability. For many artists,
the gure of the gangsta does not travel well to Africa. Msia Clark’s discussion
of Somali-Canadian rapper K’Naan and his song “What’s Hardcore” captures
this complexity.66 K’Naan’s contribution to the hip hop game in Kenya should be
noted as well, as he has spent much time in Nairobi, where he recorded songs such
as “Soobax” (Come Out). In “What’s Hardcore,” he juxtaposes violence-ridden
Somalia with life on the U.S. streets to highlight the articiality of U.S. street life
compared to the ongoing battles for peace in Somalia. Clark notes that K’Naan’s
identication with U.S. Black culture, his use of Ebonics or African American Ver-
nacular English (AAVE), and his work with U.S. rappers means his discussion
is not imsy or appropriative. However, K’Naan’s comparison, while elucidating
the tragedies of Somalia, is slightly irresponsible, as he does not locate the gang-
sta within multilayered structural, economic, and historic antiblackness that con-
tinues to destroy Black communities in totalizing ways. Still, his larger conversa-
tion is signicant. Like many Kenyan artists, K’Naan’s anity with Black culture
is complex and intimate, yet he never embraces the gure of the gangsta and its
relationship to violence.
ug subjectivities y in the face of political love in Nairobi rap. Such love does
not mean that everything in hip hop is revered, just as explorations of diaspora
do not translate to an open acceptance of everything that has the potential to
confer blackness. Although spreading political love appears one-directional, that
, ,
is, artists spread love to Kenya, they also desire to be valued by Kenyan society.
Because of these yearnings, many artists trenchantly confront the criticisms that
seem to be leveled at them constantly. When MC Bagol uses the nyatiti, he connects
rap to the beauty of Kenya’s other musical expressions; such exercises exemplify
practitioners’ love of the self through culture. Many artists also create uncountable
forms of ludic corporealities and lyrical maneuvers meant to undermine struc-
tures of power and produce spaces of immersive creativities. However, utilizing
the thug as a rebellious gure rarely works in maintaining underground spaces
because its very construction is built on society’s credulous derision. Michael
Jeries extrapolates how the U.S. thug rapper understands that onlookers (both
white and respectable Black) have an endless supply of judgment and contempt at
what they see as the thug’s unnecessary nihilism and wanton violence. He notes,
“ug subjectivity is rooted not only in outsider and rebel status but in the fact
that existence as a thug is based on the premise and knowledge that you are hated.”67
In U.S. rap, these characteristics of gangsta rappers who are men and sometimes
women bad bitches can both apply pressure to the contradictions of the U.S. state’s
excessive eagerness to author violence and resist the respectability politics that
trap Black people in unwinnable scenarios. In comparison, Nairobi underground
artists do not accept society’s hate; instead, they aim for a recognition that their
music is valuable and eective. erefore, the image of the deviant thug does not
map onto Kenyan society with the same subversive force.
Much like the tomboy, the image of the gangsta thug rapper is entangled with
ideas of excess and mimicry. Women who act as men in a context where artists
are already rendered copycats of the west face many diculties. e same is true
for the gangsta thug. In a setting where artists must prove their worth as cre-
ative producers, such a label is not something that most can aord. e gangsta,
like the tomboy, embodies too much excess, too much masculinity where there
should not be, too much toughness, and too much blackness. If artists are to cite
blackness from the U.S., it must be the kind that is supposedly generative, useful,
and politically salient. e undercurrent of respectability is found within discus-
sions of the gangsta thug, just as it is present in discussions of the tomboy. Artists
want their bodies to be read as deant and forceful, but only to a point. Women
can be rappers, but only if their presence does not destabilize the entrenched
notions of masculinity that mark and constitute hip hop culture. Furthermore,
formations of the thug are simply not protable in the underground scene. It
is doubtful that any NGO, and indeed no church, would host a gangsta rap
event. It is also unlikely that artists would want to draw any potential associa-
tions with gang organizations or street cartels that widely and oen violently
operate in Nairobi, especially given the police’s readiness to inict violence on
these groups.
Evaredi’s song “Ukweli” is fascinating in that he incorporates the thug into the
song’s general themes of Pan-Africanism and working-class consciousness. Evaredi
and much of his crew wear T-shirts with the wording “T.H.U.G. Familia [family]”
on them. ug Familia is his former rap group, which he was a part of before going
solo in the late s, and here, T.H.U.G. is an acronym for True Heroes Under
God. e term is redened as a part of political seriousness and articulated as
something purposeful for hip hop culture, which is one of the only ways it could
be used in the underground. However, for this video analysis, it is quite dicult to
see the wording familia on the T-shirts. Also, ug Familia was not as well known
as other groups, meaning that what viewers mostly visually encounter in “Ukweli”
is the word THUG. Nonetheless, Evaredi’s reconception of the term aligns with the
earnest premise of fortitude and social consciousness found throughout the song.
At the beginning of the song, he raps, “Hey Bana, I’m a Blackstar ka Ghana, Bafana
Bafana, Mwafrika kwa sana.”68 In this line, Evaredi captures the Africanist thrust of
much of the Nairobi underground. e line translates to “Hey man, I’m a Blackstar
like Ghana, Bafana Bafana, a true African.” Evaredi asserts a Pan-African subjec-
tivity when he raps that he is “a Blackstar like Ghana” and a “Mwafrika kwa sana.”
He uses “Blackstar,” which is the name of Ghana’s football (soccer) team, while also
contending that he is a “Black star.” His references to Ghana’s Blackstar and South
Africa’s Bafana Bafana, both football (soccer) teams, espouse his Pan-African sub-
jectivity vis-à-vis sports. Not a player for either team, he uses these references to
develop his politics as an African rapper. In this single line, Evaredi reaches across
several borders to usher forth notions of African resilience and strength, as Ghana
was the rst sub-Saharan country to obtain its independence, and South Africa is
oen cited for its uprisings and defeat of apartheid. He calls forth African strug-
gles by drawing lines from one country to the next, positioning himself as a true
African or Mwafrika kwa sana.
Evaredi also goes by MC Snarl and is from the working-class area of Embakasi.
As already mentioned, EMBA is the basis for his small-scale clothing line, with
“” as a reference to Embakasi’s matatu route. Additionally, the settings of his
music videos oen create a presentation of wealth. In my interview with him, he
argued that hip hop has the power to stop conict and gave the example of when
the government commissioned artists to hold concerts aer the – postelec-
tion violence. Evaredi acknowledged that these concerts featured other types of
popular music, but upheld that hip hop works best to carry a message: “e main
thing is the message. What you are telling the people. Like I can say, hip hop is the
best tool for peace. For people to stop war. Hip hop is true.” When I asked him
what “war” he referred to, he responded:
Artists are capable of getting down to the common mwananchi,69 the slums, yeah,
the second-class houses. at’s hip hop; that’s where hip hop is. Basically for me, I
know that for me you can’t hip hop in a big estate ... that guy won’t be talking, won’t
be talking of peace, but he don’t know what war is. You can’t talk of peace when you
don’t know what war is.70
, ,
Here what Evaredi describes is a class war, where the poor suer. ese references
to poverty also align with the themes in “Ukweli.” Krunkid’s chorus is: “Ukweli wa
mambo (e truth about problems) / Nakupa ukweli wa mambo (I give you the
truth about problems) / Twakupa ukweli wa mambo (We give you the truth about
problems) / Cuz it’s the way this world is unfair to me/ I gotta keep it real for real,
it’s true to me.”71
Furthermore, Evaredi’s lyrics, just like Ran-D’s lines about social connement,
position him in a place of knowing in opposition to what he perceives as social
ills. He raps about his sense of hustle, which has supposedly brought him upward
mobility, and relatedly briey performs the “making it rain” gesture. His bodily
movements and stances in “Ukweli,” which exude condence and self-assurance,
communicate additional knowledge about how to confront society’s diculties.
Evaredi raps in front of his crew, which is composed of all men except for Krunkid
and a small child. Some of the men look into the camera and bob their heads as
Evaredi raps, while others look away or down as they listen. is common perfor-
mance communicates that Evaredi can speak or rap on behalf of their experiences,
which he does with self-assuredness. Evaredi enacts what Miles White describes
as “street swagger,” which “indexes not only rhythm and style in one’s performance
of physical self and personal carriage, but a high degree of self-condence, the
knowledge that one can handle himself in any situation with cool and sophisti-
cation.”72 Evaredi performs repetitive gestures throughout the video. When he is
sitting, his hands move toward and away from his body in sharp and clear move-
ments to the beat of the song and the ow of his lyrics. At times, he puts his head
down in contemplation while putting his hands up as he nishes a lyric.
is video shows bright and contrasting colors and a shiny and crisp back-
ground. Evaredi wears a backward hat, a Converse jacket, designer jeans, and sun-
glasses. His protégé, Krunkid, dresses in expensive clothes and wears ashy jew-
elry and sunglasses studded with rhinestones. e venue is Le Vans, a moderately
priced club on Uhuru Highway on a perhaps symbolic precipice of east and west
Nairobi. ough it is a modest location, the framing of the video creates the illu-
sion that it is a high-end establishment.
e term thug has a double meaning in this video. Not only is it reconceptual-
ized as something useful for political seriousness, but it also easily joins with the
song’s portrayal of the working-class grind and hypermasculinities. In “Ukweli,”
the lyrics do not present such economic activities within the perhaps conven-
tional thug rhetoric of illicitness and violence, but rather Evaredi’s hood success is
craed as both vague and benign. In most rap music, just like in this song, all we
know is that the hustle is possible, but outside of selling music, we do not know
exactly what the occupation is. is shiy refusal to say what work rappers do
outside of making and selling music is part of the deance of being unsurveillable.
Moreover, both versions of the thug are masculinized and globally recognizable
and, therefore, become pliable toward the dierent aims of this particular video.
Evaredi’s most enthralling intervention is how he plays with the word, emptying
out its historic denition in Kenya as a socially hated gure and then concur-
rently surrounding it with the well-worn markers of the term. is simultaneous
resistance and compliance to conventions is at the core of the eectiveness of a
hip hop politics of subversion. Further, his wordplay, alongside the song’s other
themes of rap culture’s street hustle, invites a critical question about whether the
gure of the thug, partly pulled from Black U.S. rap, can t into Nairobi hip hop’s
paraphernalia of customary citations. Artists dedicate themselves to disruption as
a theoretical practice of making good music and disturbing the social norms oen
deemed pernicious and unusable for many lower-class African youths. “Ukweli”
both conforms and departs from the common underground text, with the help of
the gure of the thug on both fronts.
THE TIME FOR DIASPORA
Michael Wanguhu and Russell Kenya’s documentary, Ni Wakati (It’s Time),
holds contemporary discussions about hip hop diaspora in Kenya and about
themes of African and Black revolution, commercialization, and hip hop home-
lands.73 e lm is centered around two noncommercial African American rap-
pers, M from Dead Prez and Umi from P.O.W., and follows the duo as they take
a trip to Kenya and Tanzania. It highlights some of the historical connections
between East Africans and African Americans. As Ni Wak ati unfolds, the audience
. “Ukweli” music video, featuring Evaredi and Krunkid. Screenshot by author.
Source: idke musiq, “Snarl Evaredi Ft Krunkid—Ukweli Ocial Video,” YouTube,
October , , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDrAHBwXco.
, ,
witnesses how the rappers mostly work with a version of diaspora that locates rap
traditions in Africa and how they see themselves as making a return to a distant
cultural homeland. ey speak with various actors in the Tanzanian and Kenyan
industry about blackness as an imposed subjecthood due to historic tracking
and enslavement in the U.S. and describe themselves as Africans who have been
estranged from their native land. Umi and M spend the lm traveling to hip hop
events, namely WAPI Nairobi and WAPI Tanzania, performing, talking to artists,
elding interview questions at radio stations, spending time in the studio, and
reporting on their numerous excursions.
Although the lm seeks to see hip hop as indigenous to Africa, in the end, it
conrms that the music is rooted rmly in U.S. blackness. In so doing, Ni Wa k a t i
works with two interrelated conceptions of diaspora found throughout the music.
First, it directly mirrors the Afro-Atlantic diaspora, whereby the characteristics of
hip hop are considered to have begun among African griots and drumming tradi-
tions, aer which it moved to the New World, eventually emerging in the South
Bronx via the urban and Black descendants of kidnapped Africans, and nally
returned to Africa amidst its spread around the globe.74 It should be noted that
Kenyan rappers are oen dissatised with their exclusion from this diaspora and
make claims about the existence of East African oral historians and musical prac-
tices, thereby including themselves in the continental contributions of the origins
of rap culture. e second type of diaspora stresses that the autochthonous set-
ting of hip hop was in the U.S. before it moved outward to various sites in Africa
and around the globe.75 e lm seeks to communicate that the second form is
widely known in rap circles and needs reconsideration, which is the core theme of
Umi and M’s journey to East Africa. As they move to dierent sites throughout
Tanzania and Kenya, these rappers aim to highlight that the rst type of diaspora,
beginning in Africa and moving outward, is less known and underappreciated.
Ni Wakati includes interviews with an impressive array of people, all providing
insight into their understanding of the general theme of hip hop across borders. In
the beginning, as Umi and M pack up and head to the airport, the lm introduces
Davy D (also written as Davey D) and Toni Blackman. Davy D is a U.S. journalist,
historian, radio host, college professor, and longtime activist whose work in hip
hop and Black politics spans several decades. A member of the old-school group
Orange Krush, he is also known for working with artists such as Run DMC and
Kurtis Blow in the s and has played bass for Public Enemy. In the early s,
Toni Blackman formed the workshop Freestyle Union. She is also the founder of
Rhyme Like a Girl (RLAG) collective, where she continued to focus on the impor-
tance of the cypher. Blackman has also served as the U.S. Hip Hop Ambassador
with the State Department, for which she has traveled internationally to give lec-
tures and facilitate workshops. Like Davy D, she has also taught college courses.
Her presence in the documentary is apropos, as she has collaborated with African
artists throughout the diaspora.76 Soon aer Davy D and Blackman appear, so too
does Binyavanga Wainaina, the late Kenyan author and journalist. Wainaina wrote
several essays, including “How to Write about Africa” and the book One Day I Will
Write about is Place: A Memoir.77 e late Geronimo Ji-Jaga Pratt, the famous
U.S. Black Panther, also speaks about the types of hip hop that come into Africa.
Grati images of his godson, Tupac Shakur, from either Tanzania or Kenya, are
interspersed throughout his dialogue. Pratt discusses his apprehension about hip
hop surfacing on the African continent, given what he sees as the “negativity” of
U.S. styles. However, recognizing the work of Kalamashaka and UFMM, he con-
cedes the benecial contributions that the music makes to societies. In the lm,
Pratt speaks from Tanzania, where he lived for the latter part of his life until he
passed in .78
Charlotte Hill O’Neal, better known as Mama C, and her husband, Mzee Pete
O’Neal, who reside in Arusha, are also featured. e couple runs a community
organization, the United African Alliance Community Center (UAACC). In the
s, Mzee Pete was the chairman of the Kansas City Chapter of the Black Pan-
thers. He ed into exile in the s aer being arrested for a gun charge and then
spent time in Algeria before settling in Tanzania with Mama C.79 e lm cap-
tures a reside discussion about Pan-Africanism among M, Umi, Mama C, Mzee
Pete, and other unnamed artists. Notably, Mama C appeared in the collaborative
album of the Afrikan Hip Hop Caravan alongside Mic Crenshaw, Khusta,
and others (discussed earlier in this chapter). She is a long-standing spoken word
practitioner, adept in the nyatiti and other African instruments, and frequently
creates music with African rappers. In the Caravan album, she raps in “Soul
Power” and “Zimbabwe.” In the lm, the couple speaks to rappers as elders, coun-
seling young people and performing ceremonial libations and Africanist elder
and ancestral acknowledgment that are both indigenous to Africa and practiced
throughout the diaspora.
rough their travels, M and Umi position Africanity as a foundational ele-
ment in hip hop. Aer arriving in Kenya, both announce their Africanness and
discuss the failure of the U.S., a country that they argue is not their factual home-
land. Viewers see M rapping his signature, “I’m a African / I’m a African, uhh /
And I know what’s happenin” from Dead Prez’s well-known song “I’m a African.”
To compare, in the song “Amandla” and its music video, Mic Crenshaw brings
blackness and Africanity into one conceptual space. Mic Crenshaw’s avowal that
he is “Black American” occurs in the same sonic space as the expression “Aman-
dla,” the nyatiti, Nairobi hoods, and the matatu. In Ni Wa k ati, Umi and M do not
name blackness as a primary current and instead do something entirely dierent.
For them, blackness falls out of their self-denition, seeing it as representative
of how the U.S. has disarticulated African peoples from their original home-
lands through forced displacement and enslavement. roughout the documen-
tary, the artists speak to audiences about the need for African hip hop to avoid
, ,
the many snares of American styles, such as corporate takeovers and the bodily
celebration of wealth through items such as jewelry and clothing, oen detested
in conscious rap communities. M and Umi proclaim that they have witnessed
how consumer culture has eliminated the music’s political force, or to cite S. Craig
Watkins, “[dulled] the oppositional edges” of U.S. hip hop, and that their goals are
to avoid the same trend in Africa.80 eir solution is frequently espoused by Black
nationalist artists and concerns the need to seize creative and economic control
over the production and circulation of the genre. ese artists seek to paint Africa
as a hip hop homeland and a place of purity and relative incorruptibility compared
to the fraught U.S. music industries.
M and Umi’s understandings of Africa and Africanity are framed through the
lens of U.S. Afrocentricity. While they remove blackness from their self-deni-
tions, what they miss is how their views are deeply embedded in a Black and Afro-
centric idea of Africa. M and Umi desire to ground their work in Africanness,
but the politics of diasporic liberatory movements force to the surface just how
much U.S. blackness is embedded in their version of hip hop’s Pan-Africanism. At
one point and in front of an audience, they proclaim “RBG!” (or Red, Black, and
Green), which is an ode to Dead Prez’s musical themes and the ag of Black
Nationalism and Pan-Africanism. While many in Kenya are familiar with the ag
and Garveyism, the declaration “RBG!” is uncommon.81 It is not that Kenyans
or other Africana peoples would not understand the intentions behind RBG; it
is more that the term has a particular resonance in politically conscious hip hop
communities in the U.S. In another moment in the lm, M begins a speech by
greeting people with a shout of “uhuru!,” Swahili for “freedom.” However, this
is no longer the rallying cry it once was during independence in East Africa, nor is
it a greeting in the region. Hence, the audience does not respond to his call. His
speech about his return to Africa does receive enthusiastic applause for the weight
of his words, but at the end, when he calls out “Ashe!/Às!” the crowd does not
respond again, as the word has little cultural relevance in East Africa.82 is bor-
rowing from Yoruba philosophies is a long-standing practice in the U.S. among
those who point their cultural orientations toward Africa.83 M’s speech-acts are
a few of the many ways Black people in the U.S. form understandings of African
contexts and cultures through rap.84 Paul Gilroy describes in his o-cited magnum
opus Black Atlantic that Afrocentricism is oen “heavily mythologised Africanity
that is itself stamped by its origins not in Africa but in a variety of pan-African
ideology produced most recently by black America.”85 Hence, even though M and
Umi proclaim Africanity, it is cultivated through U.S. reference points.
M and Umi present themselves as willing to learn about the particularities of
Kenya’s ethnic landscape beyond a facile and tourist encounter. During one scene,
then-Kenyan radio DJ Albert Josiah asks them questions about their time in the
country. Umi answers that he has been hanging out in the hood and recently ate
Mukimo. e dish, consisting of mashed potatoes, greens, and corn, among other
vegetables, is eaten by many in Kenya and is popular in the central provinces
and the Kikuyu, Embu, and Meru communities. ey both wish to make a point
that they are not tourists in the conventional sense, coming into the country and
bouncing from airport to coast with little interaction with Kenyans outside of the
service sector. To eat Mukimo, they had to visit someone’s house or go to a restau-
rant specializing in more traditional dishes. While it is not dicult to locate such
eating spots in Nairobi, in the city’s commercial districts, which many foreigners
frequent, it is much easier to nd fast food and nyama choma (roasted meat) res-
taurants. As Umi proclaims his recent consumption of the food, M grins and bobs
back and forth alongside his traveling partner. He then shouts, “We Kikuyu boys
now!,” eliciting chuckles from Josiah and the others in the studio.86 While proud
of his knowledge of Kikuyu foods, M appears to know little about the etiquette
surrounding ethnicity and the historical ways in which it can confer divisiveness,
power, and privilege in Kenya. M’s tossing of the term Kikuyu into radio space
was perhaps uninformed. Kenya and Wanguhu’s decision to include this moment
in the lm is odd, especially given the tense atmosphere surrounding ethnic iden-
tities. Nonetheless, these are the rappers’ attempts to recognize the unique social
landscape of Kenya.
e lm highlights the methods of artists’ indigenization processes. Binya-
vanga Wainaina contributes to the conversation, stating that Kenyan hip hop is a
literary movement that cannot be contained by the written word alone. Accord-
ing to him, the music has fundamentally altered how people see themselves and
the world, and he scos at older people who lament about artists’ apparent deep
desires to be western or American. Wainaina criticizes these ill-advised people
for spending too much time listening to Luther Vandross or Congolese Lingala
music and then discusses how rappers have built an industry of production,
recording, and performance that is uniquely Kenyan. His comparisons between
rappers and older devotees of non-Kenyan sounds are stark and poignant. For
Wainaina, rappers have created a system of cultural production that is far more
indigenized and embedded in Kenyan social life than the older Kenyans who criti-
cize them for copying the U.S.
A moving moment occurs when Kamah from Kalamashaka speaks to M and
Umi in a car as they transition between destinations, testifying, “You guys inspire
us like crazy, we get it from you, you know? You know, it’s our culture, we’re in
Africa. We were supposed to know our culture, but you guys made us look for our
cultures.”87 Here Kamah emphasizes that hip hop originates in African culture but
that it is not recognizable to Africa until it is seen from afar (the U.S.) and then
reimported into the continent. Kamah’s comment articulates a fundamental dif-
ference between African Americans and Africans as demarcated by borders and
power. Here, I believe that both notions of diaspora are at work in Kamah’s state-
ment. While he solidies that the music’s elements are rooted in the cultures of
Africa, he also understands that U.S. artists created the music and made it legible
, ,
for African rappers to use as a cultural system. In this statement, the U.S. is both a
starting point and a part of the diaspora responsible for birthing the music.
e lm is also a reminder that the practice of cisgender masculinity helps
to make hip hop diasporic and politically conscious, whether in the U.S. or East
Africa. Aer arriving in Tanzania to do a WAPI performance and visit Mama C
and Mzee Pete, Umi and M visit Coco Beach in Dar es Salaam. M appears on
the beach, playful and cheerful. He bobs and dances, creating his own rhythm,
and raps, “I wanna go, I wanna go, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I
wanna go, I wanna go, I wanna, I wanna go to Africa / Not being pimped like a ho
in America / Not being pimped like a ho in America.”88 According to M, being in
America or dealing with the U.S. hip hop grind is similar to being held in the ines-
capable feminized position of “ho,” wherein he is exploited and abused sexually.
Likewise, his desire to be in Africa is equated to a desire not to be “hoed out” and
therefore to be able to exercise full cisgender masculine autonomy over his gis.
is inection of masculinity reveals an important part of M’s diasporic articula-
tions; his desire to be in Africa is rooted in his armation of his cisgender mas-
culinity. Together, his dance, bob, and lighthearted freestyle elucidate a common
practice in underground and politically conscious circles: the alliance of the
ludic and masculine within hip hop creativity. Artists are considered inventive,
sharp, and witty when they can insert ideas about what it means to rearm the
genre’s masculinity in new ways. M’s beachside orature presents the playful and
seemingly innocuous assertion of the disavowal of a femininity that is read as
deprecatingly sexually promiscuous.
ere are only a few brief appearances by women rappers in the lm, although
the elision appears unintentional. At one point, UFMM rapper Empress Vicky is
lmed at a WAPI voicing an ode to the culture using a Malcolm X quote. Other
than this, the interviews with Toni Blackman mainly ll the space of what should
be a hearty contribution of African women and other rappers of marginalized gen-
ders. One specic scene in the lm captures the paternalizing silence that women
rappers continue to endure. e traveling duo are in Tanzania, speaking about
the lack of women within East African hip hop while elding questions during an
interview. M frames the absence of women artists as a problem that East African
hip hop must undoubtedly confront. As he speaks about an artist he met named
Anna, the lm cuts to her recent WAPI performance. Anna is shown rapping on
the stage and commanding the respect of those who watch her, yet the voice of M
discussing the absence of women is placed over the footage of Anna and her per-
formance. Rather than showing her rapping with full sound, the lm only displays
Anna’s body and her performance, and her raps are muted for the sake of M’s
voice, which discusses the lack of women artists. Anna is only partially embodied;
her body is present, but her voice is not. M interprets the embodiment of Anna’s
mic-rocking, and the lm’s viewers, therefore, know little about her embodied
ow. e prioritization of M’s diagnoses over and literally on top of Anna is an
appropriate allegory for how men artists perform a gendered knowability that is
oen at the expense of women. e lm does include Toni Blackman’s lengthy and
signicant discussion about the place of women in hip hop, but her statements do
not recuperate the lm’s gendered arc that results from instances like the silencing
of Anna and M’s beach pimp and ho performative.
Ni Wakati arms two details: that U.S. hip hop blackness serves as a consistent
mention and that the music is a globally masculinized culture. Even when M and
Umi insist on making a return to what they see as a hip hop homeland to identify
the real and authentic origins of the music, they tell their story through the lenses
of African Americanness, using the historically masculinized theoretical practices of
Afrocentricity and U.S. Black nationalism, further arming that U.S. hip hop
blackness is a constant reference point. ey frame their trip as a going back and,
in brief instances, paint African hip hop as an ungarnished music not touched
by the dirtiness of American commercialism, mirroring the notions of a static
African past unsullied by attempts at modernity. e undercurrent thematic ele-
ments of going back and an African past draw away from the intensely fruitful
conversations present throughout the lm that highlight the historical and con-
temporary connections between U.S. Black people and East Africans, including
how hip hop enhances those narratives. Moreover, the lm’s most persuasive point
is that Nairobi rappers and other practitioners in East Africa insist on their place
in the music’s diaspora. Ni Wakati, in many ways, does not lend itself to Marc
Perry’s notion that artists work from a diaspora composed of multiple elements
of Afro-Atlantic blackness. Yet Perry also writes about “nationally transcendent
modes of black diasporic identication,” where thinking beyond the way nations
construct categories of racial dierence is imperative.89 Similarly, the rappers, g-
ures like Mama C and Mzee Pete, and the numerous commentators work from
a fundamental principle of Pan-Africanist solidarity. All participants in the lm
grasp that Pan-Africanism oen runs against the dominant ways that Kenyan and
Tanzanian societies present racial categories, especially given the complicated rep-
resentations of U.S. Black Americans. M, Umi, and other rappers put forth the
idea that viewers of the lm must understand hip hop’s African origins to posit
its complexity. By the end, what is most evident is that despite the goal of con-
structing the music culture as beginning in Africa, the lm mostly conrms that it
works from a U.S.-inspired masculinized diasporic blackness, which operates as a
continual fulcrum for other forms of the global music.
is diasporic blackness is malleable and, in Kenya, tted to mostly express a
lower-class cultural sentiment of resistance to forces like commercialism and impe-
rialism that practitioners see as impeding on their lives. ere are several moments
where the lm achieves Paul Zeleza’s point that we ought to move beyond a search
for Africa’s roots in the New World, and instead look to understand how Africa
contributes to the back-and-forth musical ows and cultural practices that make
Africana musics so rich. For one, the lm introduces Dead Prez’s groundbreaking
, ,
album Let’s Get Free, reiterating its then popularity across the continent and
Kalamashaka’s foundations in making Kenyan hip hop possible. ese artists are
presented alongside each other as having the same missions of economic and
social autonomy for Africana peoples. roughout the lm, we hear Kenyan artists
drawing inuence from U.S. rappers, as well as a specic point when M arms
that his cultural inspiration is Africa, aer which the lm moves into a beautifully
compelling guitar-accompanied freestyle that includes Nairobi artists MC Kah,
Kamah, Zakah, Labala, Agano, Swaley, as well as M and Umi. Moreover, aer
discussing the largely unappreciated labor and conscious messaging that Kala-
mashaka put into the music, Albert Josiah concludes that “[Kalamashaka] are our
Mau Mau.” Aer showing the famous images of the detained Dedan Kimathi, the
lm cuts to a Malcolm X image and excerpt from the speech “Message to
the Grassroots,” where he states, “ere’s been a revolution—A Black revolution
going on in Africa, in Kenya. e Mau Mau were revolutionaries.”90
Ni Wakati, thus, succeeds in helping to recount a story, not of a rigid and static
Africa as a needy recipient of the west’s tools but as an active participant in concep-
tualizing Black music and its imperative themes of political consciousness. Zeleza
writes that Black musics of the past have been constituted through “returns, both
permanent and periodic, physical and psychic, through migrations and increas-
ingly the mass media[, which have] created loops of musical inuences.”91 Ni
Wakati represents hip hop in the same manner. From M and Umi’s return, lyrical
cyphers occurred, and practitioners and activists alike had conversations about
attaining Pan-Africanist visions and resisting corporate control in music. Among
this, viewers were reminded that U.S. hip hop has sculpted inuence from Kenyan
movements and themes for social revolution and, additionally, that Kenyan music
engages in an assiduous citational exercise that pulls from U.S. Black music while
creating something new and sustaining.
Ni Wakati provides critical instances of how artists construct ideas of global
blackness to constitute the culture of music communities. In her seminal article
“Dening Diaspora, Rening a Discourse,” Kim Butler theorizes how to conduct
the imperative work of ascertaining distinguishable elements of diaspora, writ-
ing that diaspora can, in fact, be a “framework for the study of a specic process
of community formation.”92 Butler elaborates on the careful work of identifying
diasporan groups, their dispersal, the places that host them, and their relation-
ships to their respective homelands. She asserts that diasporas are self-dening by
people whose identities, while unstable, are central to understanding their lives
concerning dispersals and homelands. Inspired by Butler’s work, I determine that
Kenyan artists make decisions about how to exercise creative agency in producing
diasporic blackness. Rappers use it malleably to explore Kenyan social and politi-
cal life, to assert ideas about Pan-Africanism, and to arm their participation in a
global hip hop community.