CELEB BUZZ: What happened to the mighty King Kaka?

Hip-hop artiste King Kaka. PHOTO | COURTESY

What you need to know:

  • Kaka is not the first one to be chewed up by the chaos that surrounds the job.
  • King Kaka the conscientious observer has been thoroughly supplanted by King Kaka the skittish rambler.

King Kaka is a phenomenal businessman. In fact, it isn’t fallacious to say that he mirrors the entrepreneurship skills of rich American rappers like Jay Z and Puffy.

He also has an impeccable fashion sense. I am surprised that Italian suit brand Georgio Armani hasn’t given him an endorsement yet. It’s long overdue. He always dresses like he’s going to a tycoon’s wedding or a gala.

Sadly, when the conversation shifts to music, the tone has to change from complimentary to concern. Lately, his lyrical dexterity and instinct for catchy jams appear to have deserted him.

His latest track “Sababu” confirmed this to me. In an era where the best Kenyan artistes are getting no less than 500,000 YouTube views in a week or two, “Sababu” sits at just 60,000 yet it’s been out for close to a month.

For an artiste of his stature, that’s severe underperformance. Most of his releases over the past year have low viewership figures too. 

When I first came across “Sababu”, I was eager to have a listen. I mean this was King Kaka, you know, the dude who made “Adisia”, “Jam Nakam” and “Swahili Shakespeare”. Not to forget the wickedly creative “Uko Sure”.

Kennedy Ombima, aka King Kaka, a musician and the CEO of Kaka Empire. PHOTO | COURTESY

After listening to “Sababu”, I wasn’t disappointed. I was simply sad – the sadness of seeing someone you used to love change for the worse. If you were asked to name three good songs that Kaka Empire’s chief executive has dropped over the past three years, you would struggle to remember. 

It wasn’t always like this. King Kaka used to bring straight heat. His lyrics used to dig deeper into the emotive and cognitive terrain of what initially seemed like life’s ordinary activities. He was a genius who could bless us with punctilious poetry. He was capable of extracting the extra out of simple topics. He could make 1 + 1 to be 3, sometimes even 4 or 5.

I remember the first time I met him. I was a first year university student. My friends and I had gone to Wapi Festival, a monthly hip-hop concert that used to be held at the Sarakasi Dome in Ngara, Nairobi.

King Kaka was still fresh in the game. He had just found success with songs such as “Dodoma” featuring Harry Kimani and “Mtu Hivi Hivi”. He still used to wear a durag those days and had the appearance of a hustler, not a magnate. His music was rich in hardened street wisdom.

Everyone showed him respect that day. There were over 100 underground rappers at the venue and they all took turns to knock fists with him. They felt blessed to inhale the same oxygen as him. He was seen as the future of Kenyan hip-hop. Legendary rapper Chiwawa, who was also present, even crowned King Kaka his successor.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

Kaka is not the first one to be chewed up by the chaos that surrounds the job. In hip-hop, there is a term that gets used a lot. This is term is ‘selling out’. Rappers are often accused of selling out if they change their style or dilute their rhymes once they become famous. If a rapper ditches his trademark raw delivery for trendy sounds, he is labelled a sell-out.

It’s said that the quality of a rapper’s music is usually better when they are still trying to make a name for themselves. Once they become famous, they tend to relax. At that point, anything goes for them. Their thinking becomes ‘People already like me now. I don’t have to spend 12 hours writing a song anymore. I can just write a song in one hour, record it and release it.’

However, it’s still a choice in the end. Not everyone gets chewed up in the chaos. There is a reason why the popularity of some rappers fades while others stay at the top. There is a reason there are only two rappers in Kenya who are considered the crème – Khaligraph and Octopizzo – and not nine or 10 of them.

King Kaka at his album launch in Nairobi on March 31, 2015. PHOTO | FILE 

Kaka’s biggest mistake was abandoning hip-hop for kapuka and love songs. This way, he lost his core fan base. Most of his songs nowadays are collaborations with singers. This is never a good look for a rapper unless you are Ja Rule (Look where that one ended up).

I believe that his other undoing is his habit of prioritising quantity over quality. He releases too many songs over a short span of time, songs where he is simply lumbering through his verses, instead of taking his time and releasing say one good song in two months. No advisers maybe?

An artiste needs real people around him, people who can point out mistakes. King Kaka doesn’t appear to have such people.  

Come to think of it, it seems like the name change did him a huge disservice too. He was a beast back when he was called Rabbit. When he changed to King Kaka, all his powers somehow faded.

In a music industry that has a penchant for glorifying newcomers while branding expiration dates on old-timers, he is lucky to still have a big name.

We can’t fault his effort. He keeps trying but for whatever combination of reasons, the end results are broken songs swimming in bad beats that you can’t imagine extended hours of studio sittings could have saved.

King Kaka the conscientious observer has been thoroughly supplanted by King Kaka the skittish rambler. He definitely requires a resurrection. Two good hip-hop songs in a row will thrust him back to contention for ‘King Of Rap’. But the resurrection won’t happen out of a miracle. It will only happen if he seriously wants it to.