Bvumai kutongwa nemaSalad

Earlier this year, I stated that NOPMakoni would be my pick for ZHH album of the year and Risky Life 2 would be my pick if someone asked me to pick a ZHH album to represent it at the Namas. My major consideration was that while it was undeniable in ZHH circles that Voltz was the king of the hill, our resident Popstar had two songs with more streams than everyone else's catalogue in the same period, including Voltz and Saintfloew who are his two closest commercial rivals

Since then, it hurts my heart (Not really 😂) to admit that I've come around even more on NOPMakoni and Voltz in general and . But there's a truth that we need to acknowledge: Voltz made some big pop records on this album. Ordinarily, I'd just concede via a tweet and keep it moving, but this isn't about a random opinion I'm going back on. This is about a level of respect that we owe hip hop that I didn't give it by making that distinction.

Hip hop is quite obviously the biggest genre in the country, and the album that wins album of the year at the Zim Hip Hop Awards deserves NAMA consideration all things being equal. When you take a step back, you realise that BOTH Risky Life 2 and NOP Makoni should be nominated for a NAMA this year, and NOP MAKONI SHOULD WIN!

2023 was a year we saw Enzo win song of the year and best male in a year Holyten absolutely owned everything, having three of the four biggest songs in the country. It's unfortunate to watch how "the Zanu PF thing" was widely expected to hold his career back, and yet every other genre just celebrated their artists getting cars. Why does getting a car end up being a knock in a world where Jah Prayzer, Enzo, and basically every other big artist not called Winky D got cars?

But I'm digressing. The point I'm trying to make is Zim hip hop is only ever going to get the respect it deserves when we start recognising it as a community. I'll be the first to admit that I made that mistake when I said that NOPMakoni deserved Zim hip hop album of the year and Risky Life 2 deserved to be our Nama contender for album of the year. NOP Makoni absolutely deserves album of the year 2024. Who else?"

End of column

Bonus thoughts.

A couple of weeks ago, Mukudzei Mlambo suggested that the Zim Hip Hop Awards should introduce a 'Rap Album of the Year' award—one that focuses purely on the art, in addition to the overall Album of the Year (AOTY) award. Malcolm pushed back on this idea, arguing that it would create a two-tier award system. While I understand his point, I believe it may be a necessary compromise. The conversation around AOTY has become dominated by 'commercial success.' This wasn't always an issue because hip-hop albums traditionally didn’t achieve significant commercial success. If we don’t introduce this new category, the days of artists like Synik and Malcolm Mufunde winning AOTY could be behind us, and that would be a real loss for the culture.