With the evolving nature of Kenyan music, 2022 had a lot of young people in the country listening to drill music.
This genre has grown so much and so fast in 2022 that it made it way to the mainstream realm.
To understand the weight of this achievement of drill music in the country, you’ve got to understand that most people were more than convinced that it would never achieve this fete.
Drill music has evolved from hip hop music with which they share a lot of qualities.
When hip hop music was coming up in the 90s, it faced a lot of backlashes mainly because of the message it was passing since it was giving out voice to the voiceless and doing it with style and unprecedented finesse.
Originally, the genre started out in the early 70s as a subculture and an art movement from the Bronx in New York City. Its development reflected the negative effects of post-industrial decline, political discourse, and a rapidly changing economy.
As the culture spread all over the world, the narrative was read differently by different people. In the 90s as hip hop was growing all over the world, people came out to associate it to violent and crime, even suggesting that the music genre supported the same.
Drill took off in Kenya in 2020, the year of Covid. Drill is like a violent version of hip hop, to put it simplistically. The difference being that Drill is characterized by dark, gritty lyricism.
What hip hop went through is mostly what drill music in Kenya went through as it started out in the country.
Buruklyn Boyz
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Take an example of the crew that is known as the starters and/or pioneers of drill music in Kenya, Buruburu hailing Buruklyn Boyz.
This group mostly passes a message of what goes on in the streets of Nairobi and mostly what a lot of Kenyans, in general, go through especially the youth in the Eastlands area in Nairobi County.
In Nairobi, Kenya, where nearly 60 percent of the population live in slums, voices ache to be heard like never before, unified against a society that they struggle to feel part of.
Formed by these blocks, Buruklyn Boyz twitches with the inherited energy of their rap predecessors. Their hood(Buruburu) is known for championing hip-hop culture and as the birthplace of Sheng, a combination of Swahili and English slang that has become the language of the streets.
The message Buruklyn Boyz passed had many convinced that this music would only have a short stint in the market as it will not make it to the mainstream. There are also the vulgar lyrics that played a big part in this as well.
However, despite these obstacles, Buruklyn Boyz still broke out and made it to the mainstream arena.
Just like hip hop music did, drill music got its rise to glory in Kenya against all odds
Wakadinali
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Another crucial group that has played a big part in the drill music rise to glory story is Wakadinali, yes, the one and only Wakadinali.
This is arguably the most famous hip hop group in East Africa today and has a few awards to their name too. Absolutely nobody can dispute this to be a fact even though some might argue about the same, their name is still out there as one of the prolific, sought-after music groups in East and Central Africa today.
Wakadinali is a collective comprising three rappers: Scar, Domani Munga, and Sewersydaa. However, they have, working with them, a larger collective known as Rong Rende which includes the lyrically lethal female rapper Dyana Cods.
The group Wakadinali has been around for a long time. It started with Domani Munga and Scar who were friends since childhood in Umoja.
Domani says he started rapping and writing in primary school. His friend Scar was also into hip hop and had memorized a ton of lines from his favorite songs. Apparently, they chose the name Wakadinali, cardinals, because they believed they would be the saints who would save hip hop.
Most people who don’t listen to hip hop didn’t know about Wakadinali until their 2020 album dubbed ‘Victims of Madness’. Before that, they had done several albums, including the very popular Ndani ya Cockpit 2.
However, it was the bangers on the Drill album ‘Victims of Madness’ that catapulted the group into mainstream fame.
Songs like ‘Extra Pressure’, ‘Avoid those People’, and ‘Morio Anzenza’ were and still are very exciting. This album has been, for many people, the real introduction to Rong Rende about two months ago, though I had listened to several singles here and there.
Seemingly, drill music is here in Kenya to stay. The hope is that this doesn’t turn out to be a short stint of fame like what the Gengetone genre had.
Under the stewardship of Buruklyn Boyz and Wakadinali, perhaps drill music will be around for longer.
