South C’s finest: 12 years on and E-Sir still rocks

Maybe it's just anniversary fever, but nostalgia for rapper E-Sir was very strong this past week, especially on social media, as Monday, March 16, marked 12 years since a road accident robbed us of “South C’s finest”, Issah ‘E-Sir’ Mmari. He got into the music industry in 2001 with the hit single, Jo, which had a similar flow and pattern as Black Rob’s Whoa!, and got every teenager in all corners of the country singing along.

E-sir’s influence cut across boundaries and ages, and he made every teen want to own a red Ogopa DJ branded T-shirt and Damani Dada label pants.

E-Sir told a male urban class dude’s story, and that’s what made his music so relatable, the Nairobi West party stories, living in South C, and that made fans love Nimefika. E-sir’s presence in music birthed a generation of entertainers.

 ‘…bila spare tyre nasafiri kwenye barabara ya maisha bila kutaka, saa yoyote naweza pata puncture, kwa hiyvo naendesha gari yangu pole pole sana...’  - rapped E-sir in his soulful track, Hamnitishi, which featured Talia Oyando, and remains one of his most powerful songs. As he had fun in Mos Mos, E-sir poured his heart out on the Ogopa DJ-produced Hamnitishi. He excelled in both content and delivery.

He told the story of what he was going through as a celebrity, the shine and the glory that came with it at the time. His debut album, Nimefika, was a party, feel-good album and had a happy vibe to it, till you get to Hamnitishi and you start paying more attention to what he is talking about.

It’s more like a posthumous track, a track that would make more sense after his death. E-Sir summed up his career, life and personality in one song. While it’s easy for the local music scene to wait for one year to celebrate E-Sir for the artiste he was, rarely is his craft given enough light, and how timeless it is.

No matter what cultural references served as the landmark for E-Sir’s story, we should take pride in falling back into the past and tell some of his stories. The purity of his enthusiasm for whatever our equivalent of Maisha is to current local music, there aren’t many local musicians who bring the excitement and flawless energy E-Sir had in music.

Several factors made E-Sir arguably the most colourful and almost larger than life rhymesmith that he was, he was simply the finest of his time. Had he done a follow- up project before his unfortunate demise, it would have shaped a whole new conversation, but regardless of that, his impact is still felt from one album.

Twelve years later, the level of enthusiasm E-Sir had in his music might come across as a little boyish.

But he paved the way for popular local music, though it might not have been directly through his music, he encouraged budding artistes to dream of something and go for it.

As much as the local music scene has now grown and musicians are in the business of expanding their ambitions, getting bigger and bigger, the E-Sir “cloud” will always hover.