Artiste: I never meant to insult Kenyans in song
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Manuel Ntoyai and Elly Gitau
There hasn’t been a thought-provoking song in Kenya lately such as Wajinga Nyinyi, which popped up on Friday last week.
The hard-hitting poetic protest song by rapper Kennedy Ombima alias King Kaka blew off the Internet the moment it was uploaded on the video sharing site YouTube.
By yesterday evening, the song had garnered close to 1.2 million views.
But it is the debate Wajinga Nyinyi elicited that has fuelled its popularity even further. Using his creativity and poetic intelligence, the artiste chose to tread where only a few dare to.
He went all out in a bare knuckles manner to hit out at the political class—mentioning some by their names—over their greed, love and tolerance for graft.
King Kaka hit out at the ruling Jubilee regime over the unfulfilled promises as vested in its election manifesto.
Similarly, he criticised his fellow electorates for their choices at the ballot. He hit out on the tribalistic voting pattern that is synonymous with Kenya every five years, saying voters must have been stupid to let politicians dictate how and who to vote for.
Provoke thoughts
By Sunday morning, the rapper had shared fears that his life had allegedly been threatened.
However, speaking exclusively to People Daily on phone yesterday, the music maker defended the controversial song, saying he was just doing his job as an artiste and the song wasn’t meant to insult Kenyans, but to provoke their thoughts and make them reflect on their decisions.
“This song is about all of us as Kenyans to reflect on the decisions we’ve made in the past. The reason I am not doing any media interviews at the moment is because I am not clout-chasing; I am just doing my work as an artiste,” he said.
Wajinga Nyinyi is the fourth single off his mixtape titled The Servant & The King.
In the song, King Kaka asked whether Woman Reps had indeed misappropriated sanitary pads funds meant for schoolgirls.
In a Twitter post, Nairobi Woman Rep Esther Passaris defended her colleagues, saying they (MPs) only aided the distribution.
“He (King Kaka) has no idea that we do not control the sanitary towels budget, we only aided the distribution (not all counties received) with the county Comm’s office & all the area chiefs.
We as women reps have also been following up sanitary towels with the current line Ministry Education… (sic),” read the tweet.