But Wait, Who Runs what? Lessons We learnt from We Run It

We would go on to give a review of the song but I guess you can always ask Synik to do that for you. As we watched social media turn into a hashtag, kind words, unkind words, war chants and re-tweets, we decided to only talk about things that we could all learn from the current situation (which can change as we type, so gotta get this out quick). Back to school

Lesson 1: We Run It is NOT about ONE RAPPER!!

It’s a like MMT’s “Wake Up” with no names. Guys really...Don't you get it! LISTEN TO THE SONG.. Geez! The “new guy /…2 by 4” line is just one line. And that line, for all we know, might not even be talking about the rapper you are thinking about. A lot of really erhm.. feelings were expressed in that song, chief of all, being looked down upon, being slept on, not being acknowledged and simple social commentary about his journey and things that have been happening, but you know what, you might not understand it and its why we have lesson 2.

Lesson 2: Throw “subliminals” and let the crowd drive the war

Shots fired? we don’t quite think so, buy maybe we are being naïve. We listened to the song, again and again and again, no name was mentioned (except Beefy Harrison), but they did mention the alleged victims neighborhood, which trigger happy supporters could take as “shot fired” because, logically speaking, if as person says that “your neighborhood” knows “we run it”, its really up to you to feel disrespected or to take it as childish talk. In response to Kendrick Lamars assertion that he was the king of New York, P Diddy didn’t hit back with a diss track, or anything hectic really, he just gingerly poked fun at it. BUT.. did you see how peoples reaction immediately made it look like Junior Brown had gone “Ether” on Calvin? People want blood, people want war.. sometimes rappers just want to express themselves..but what if..

Lesson  3 : that could have been the plan all along.. MARKET IT!

What if, just what if, the expected reaction was exactly what Junior Brown and his team wanted and they got it? Smart thinking. Retweets are the fuel of group think! Get three people with a large following on social media, a well produced song, clever timing…and you can control the masses. Love it or hate it, one needs to respect the promotional campaign for We Run It. Think about it, we are still talking about it now right? Did you know that Marcques and Mile dropped a very GOOD album? ..YEAH.. Its called Lost In Translation!, we recommend the songs  Easy, KFC Drive By and  Rufaro. Point is, the Breezy team was clever and more resourceful enough to get all the attention to THEM.  What we are more impressed by is what Junior Brown and his team did before and after the drop, not the fact that they actually dropped it and what made it better was…

Lesson 4 : “We Run It” is a good song

Happy to say that it was a good jam, everything in there.. guitars, beat, effects.. DOPE DOPE..SUPER DOPE.. therefore

Lesson 5 : Never let ANYONE tell you that a market for Hip Hop doesn’t exist

Some people say that Zim Hip Hop is a dying genre because it has a small following. We believe that people only think that its only good Hip Hop if so and so releases it. That’s why we aren’t afraid to call out the crowds favorite on a bad song, even if the crowd is a little too timid to admit it. That’s why we don’t blog some people music . However, we  cant blame the consumer. To feed off the Zim Hip Hop market, you have to work twice as hard and three times smarter than a dance hall and sungura artiste put together. We exist, we are the market, we are just hard to please

Lesson 6: Lets push forward vs Lets beef and feed our egos?

Some people have expressed the imagined altercation as anti progressive because well, no real constructive industry gets built around beefing. Some people think that competition at least, gets people talking and Hip Hop becomes part of the conversation again. We just want good music and people to live off of it. So whichever way this goes and a big shout out to Calvin for making it clear that this isn’t a Ndebele vs Shona or Bulawayo vs Harare thing, we really just want artistes making music again.

there is lots more we could say, but we may just be jumping the gun...so for today

School is over kids.. 

heres your homework

Check out the lyric Video to "We Run It" here

@pushzw

Olova: a good Sign for Zim Music in 2016?

Last year was quite the year. We labelled it as a quite uninteresting year in our view but we cannot overlook the strides that were made last year by a lot of artists. Sharky, Calvin, R Peels and T Gonz among some of the artists who had a reasonably good 2015. We didn’t post much, but then again spamming isn’t our thing but we did create a music blog riddim towards the end of the year.

Now as 2016 kicks off things seem to be going well. In the first two weeks we have already had a couple of hot drops: T-One, Tehn, Schingy and Boi Mac have given us a good start to 2016 with the hope that it will be a hot year. Obviously there are the annual wishes we want to come true: Junior Brown’s, Tehn and Marcques’ (can you sense our bitterness at not getting an invite to the Marcques|Mile listening session) albums may actually come out this year.

The real spark for us for 2016, though still brand new is the Olova Music app. This app first came through at the Shoko festival of 2014 and seem to bring hope of monetizing the local music industry. When it first came out we decided to take a back seat and watch. The idea itself is genius and the story is very close to philanthropy as the group responsible are not making any money off the thing. It is free for artists to sign up and most of the music on it is for free though we are pleased to see that some artists have put their music up for sale. We bought a couple of tracks to test it out. Quite easy, Ecocash and Telecash so you won’t need a MasterCard.

Olova Music released their second version of the application on the 31^st of December and we have to say, we were blown away by it. Especially giving a comparison with the first version. As PUSHzw we will definitely be watching to see this wonderful application grow on our music industry. The Olova Music App (Olova 2.0 BETA) is a breath of fresh air and visionary intelligence for the music industry. We are slightly embarrassed to not have posted about them when they started but really acknowledge the foresight of bloggers like McPotar and Sp3kktrumn who were on it when it came out.

Improved User Interface: One thing day one fans and haters of the Olova app will definitely agree on is that the first Olova was functional (that is polite talk for ugly). While the first Olova was good to have and to use it was not particularly nice to look at and that is something they changed this time around. The New Olova looks nice and clean and is their biggest sign of growth. That and the new look website.

Music Streaming: Unlike on the first Olova where we were forced to download songs without sampling them, with the 2.0 Beta that is a thing of the past. All the music on Olova can be streamed for free meaning that now we can listen before we decide what we want to download. Kudos to the Olova team for listening on this one because it was a sore point, But then again when the first Olova came out we didn’t have $1/250mb Econet bundles. The timing seems almost perfect.

Newsfeed: Yes, they put a newsfeed in the new Olova. So technically what this means is that us listeners can now comment on songs in the Olova library and these comments can be found on one newsfeed within the app. So even if I hadn’t heard about a song but the comments say it is good, I may be tempted to listen. This feature will be very good for artistes and I wonder if it will make us bloggers obsolete. I guess this is what they meant when they said Making music Social.

Charts: With the 2.0 Beta Olova have given us in – App charts based on the number of Plays, number of downloads as well as the number of ‘Likes’. If a lot of people are sampling it or downloading it there must be something about that song worth listening too right? Also our view is these charts could be our next big basis of measure for Local Artists; I mean the iTunes charts are a big deal so why can’t the Olova chart be the same. I’d love to count on our radio charts but every so often they really sound biased. Who better to trust with our charts than an unbiased (we hope) application?

Artiste Profiles: Oh it is as cool as it sounds. A simple long press on an artist and you reveal the view profile option. Now you can read about your artistes past accolades and maybe they have juicy info on beefs too. I hope this feature comes with similar music.

Improved STS: The STS (Scope The Scene) was the jewel of the first Olova. An event calendar for all that happens in our busy country especially with the rare Hip Hop events that you don’t want to miss in case you aren’t around for the next one. The STS is improved, the information more concise the view more pristine. The Olova team has been working hard no doubt.

BOOKS: Just when you thought better looking was all they could give us the Olova team have introduced an extension to their portfolio of available media. This will come as good news for local authors as Olova is giving them a chance to make their ebooks easily available and easy to purchase for consumers. This could become a really good move by Olova, other than mazwi we do not have too many other options for local authors.

Of course we still have our reservations like every other person but overal the Olova 2.0 Beta is so far the best thing out of our 18 day old year. We look forward to seeing what happens throughout the year. More partnerships like the one they have with Boi Mac who has boldly promoted both Olova and his new music. Something the first generation Olova artists did not do.  The purchasing process itself seems to be semi – automatic and took a whole of thirty minutes for our recharge codes to come but we were more worried about it not coming at all.

While Olova could be the future of Zimbabwean music, the artists will have a big part to play: since Olova’s inception in 2014 it has had about 30 artists on the application but we have personally never seen more than 5 of those post about where to get their music. Only Noble Stylz was most visual in his push of his Masofa Panze 2 and the Olova app. Dj Krimz and some other artists from Ikonik also pushed. I wonder if our artists expect their music to sell itself.

A new year and great moves as the year begins! So let’s Download the Olova Music App on the Playstore or the Olova Website and keep our fingers crossed that they give us the ios version sooner than later.

Remember to Push Ur Sound Hard