#Mushikashika (Ghetto Life) Sets The Bar High For 2015 Videos (watch Video here)

the artwork for #Mushikashika

“Porisi nekanzuru zvakadzvanyaaaaaa”

Kombi surfing?

A week or so back we had a track sent to us, we had seen it’s hype doing the rounds on social media and we was like “hmmmmmmmm, Mushikashika, wonder what this will be about.” Mushikashika (Ghetto Life) is a track by NickBwai that features Cuttybeats, Zarzu, Vito and Gfingers, produced by CuttyBeats who co – produced Junior Brown’s#Maria. If there is something we have learnt from listening to CuttyBeatsproduced songs it’s that there is a certain richness and clarity in the sound that he produces; clean music without too much going on. In our books, he deserves to be rated up there with some of the local big guys.

The song looks into the life of every working and or non working Zimbo out there, talking about how we all have the different goals we are chasing and different means we are using to get there. #Mushikashika talks about the struggle for those in search of money, trying to make a living. Not just the usual rapper “I’m out here in the streets chasing paper, making records for my fans” struggle. These guys talked about everyone’s struggle from the airtime dude to the CD dudes who make sure none of our artists get an income… all of them. The instrumental is awesome, with a guitar riff that has a sound that will have you thinking of the days when we watched “Everyone’s Child” on ZTV, when ZTV wasn’t too bad. The deliveries were on point as well, we heard some Gze sounding flows but hey, Stunner and Mudiwa taught us that no one owns a style in Zimbabwe.

smell an endorsement here

So while we here at PUSHzw were busy slacking and enjoying the song, procrastinating on the post we started getting the pictures from the behind the scenes, then a short clip of the work in progress. Yes! After viewing the video last night we know now… these guys have come guns blazing with a great song and what could be one of the best videos for Zim Hip Hop in a while. The video was directed by CuttyBeats (jack of all trades much) and Gze directed the video and we gotta hand it to them...panotodiwa slow clap apa!

No attempts to give us shy amateur twerkers or mediocre beauty yellow bones awkwardly touching rappers faces. It was straight up shots of Harare, the beautifully filthy sunshine city and people at their daily hustles, grinding away, and scenery of the Harare ghetto with its outside sinks. One of our favorite shots was from the top of kombis taken from Market Square; you can tell the guys had a blast shooting this video. Going around Mpedzanhamo around Mbare to show us the picture they had painted in their song. It was a great match of what we had heard and what we finally saw.

is this my good side?

At the end of the day the song is great, with the wonderful quality of the shots they took for the video, it has the potential to be a modern day soundtrack to a movie about Zimbabwean life...hell this isn’t a Turn up track, but it is the soundtrack to our Zimbabwean lives.

Mushikashika turned out to be a breath of fresh air from the majority of Zimbabwean videos so disjointed from the audio and obviously lacking a script. These guys have the blueprint for making a good video and other artists will have to put in as much work if they want to be taken seriously. I hope people took notes.

Enough of our talking! Honestly! These PUSHzw guys think they know it all... watch the video below

Remember to always

Push Ur Sound Hard


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THE PROMISED REVIEW : ZIM HIP HOP AWARDS

Awards are supposed to exist to make industries better, to recognise the hard workers for the year and push others to work hard so as to get their acknowledgement...to assist everyone in bench-marking. Each and every year for four years now, ZHHA does the opposite. I would like to blame them for the 6 month industry silence that we had this year! Who wanted to work when the only overall industry recognition was biased?

ZHHA 2014, just when we thought that ZHHA had given us progress, Beefy and his team showed why they are the best at what they do. Heck, they've been doing it for FOUR years...that's experience!!

ZHHA 2014 looked promising, having had not too many complaints on the nominees’ side (lack of complaints could have been our “they should just do whatever, not like they ever listen to us anyway..) This year they really tried in that department. Of course there’s always one or two, but the generality of it was that they did well with the nominees. Their job was of course made easy by the lack of really ground breaking, relevant Hip Hop for most of the year.

The fans and the artists didn't disappoint, everybody dressed up for the night. Everyone was looking beautiful as they always do...the rain tried to ruin the mood but hey, it wasn't going to spoil our awards night..That's Beefy's job.

First awards of the night were well deserved awards, McPotar (who had by far the most consistent blog in 2014), Sindiso Dube, Mark Vusani, DNA...these were all very deserving award winners. The problems came with the awards everyone came to see.

Unlike last year where we had a publicized panel (though they dropped out at the 11th hour) we kinda knew who was responsible for the decisions, this year we certainly didn’t know. We must've missed the memo. Noise broke out in the last quarter of the awards, artists and fans alike chanted "BullSh*t! BullSh*t!" and we can't blame them.

PUSHzw would like to take this moment to thank HAKEEM for doing what no one else who went on stage would do. Saying what most people felt was the truth. Who needs Kanye?? However, to say that Tehn Diamond deserved what Peekay isn’t exactly something we would stand to agree with, Ma One Vs Simudza Gumbo? (bearing in mind that its awards for 2014)

These are the categories where we think the noise erupted from, and where we think Beefy and his awards did his thing:

BEST DIASPORA: Rhyme Assassin. Sarai muchiita Digest that.

BEST ALBUM: It went to Blood Money Jacob - POY. Look, it was a good album, good, content wise but also an album people didn’t hear. How much of it was played on Radio? (which we believe is part of the criteria for nomination) How much of it did people hear? The Category had Albums like Masofa Panze 2 and the Many Moods of Trae Yung all with better airplay and content that was just as good. Our winner of the night though should've been THE MMT LP. That album was so good most of the music of the night was from it! How else could you get people bumping if you didn’t play the MMT LP? It had great songs that went viral a good quality product. You would think that after the great introduction Stunner gave the award, ZHHA would have respected people enough to give it to the rightful winner.

BEST NEWCOMER: PEE KAY. Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this one because we don’t know what criteria they use for Newcomer. We remember very clearly a song with PeeKay in it more than four years ago, when he was still skinny, Ill Ceey was still secular...and Ill Ceey was still Ill Ceey. PeeKay with Illceey on Blue Jeans is from when we were in high school, and now it’s been a year since we graduated from Varsity and they give him BEST NEWCOMER. Utter F$#ckery! This award had fresh blood more deserving of a chance to be recognised and they gave it to the guy who is probably a lotta rappers' role model. Young Bulawayo rapper Cal_Vin was killing it, Nash Da King, had a good song this this year, Masofa Panze 2 artist Noble Stylz was on fire...and the awards panel killed all hopes for new acts. Who knows next year, they might put Xndr, Junior Brown or BETTER, the Major Playaz!!

BEST FEMALE: BLACKBIRD. What?? I mean “what?” Put your hands in the air if you heard more BlackBird than Trae Yung this year or any BlackBird actually, No takers? We thought so. Hanzi nhingi akapihwa award ranhingi.. #NDIKOKO. Plus, Blackbird is very Loud pa mic...barely survived with our ear drums. But she did tell us that she is the only rapper on Channel O from Zim… ah well!

PEOPLES CHOICE: Tricky J, The boy had a really good song, and if numbers don’t lie, the he won because more people voted for him than your artiste of choice, If you want your expression felt on this one, GET MORE PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR YOUR ARTISTES!

What still pisses us off about ZHHA

1.      TIME, Gosh, if you say you shall start at 1900 then start at 1900, at least at 1930, not TWO hours late, AGAIN!

2.      VIP, nominees, free for all…we will only be serious about it… for the first hour of the awards

3.      SOUND..SOUND…SOUND..

4.      If they don’t treat these awards with the importance that is due, neither will we!

5.      Can you switch off the lights,… switch off the lights!! This should be all cleared at rehearsals folks.

6.      Control your people, the audience becomes rowdy, irritable and plane simple out of control. This happened last year too

The Good bits

1.      Turn out, maybe the smaller venue gave it a better effect but it’s cool to know we have fans

2.      The visual aid for the and nominee list call out was a little more organised this year

3.      Back drop, smile and take a picture, don’t we all just love feeling cool!

4.      The drama moment had a slightly lighter side to it, though it was really disappointing, it did make for a somewhat, moment of entertainment

5.      Free Style battle, short, precise and we all liked the winner. Together with performances from Calvin, High Definition, Amard, they did put in great work. Team Bho always with something surprising on stage. It’s all hip hop.

h

@pushzw

MASOFA PANZE 2 : ALBUM REVIEW

This album really has to be one of if not the best Hip Hop album to come out this year. I bet you this...if you try to quote a line from Noble Stylz’s songs you end up with the whole song on your paper. Best Vernac MC? we don’t really see the challengers. This album is a lovely collection of songs, well chosen by the Artist

1.maBornFree

“tamba game inonzi Josiah, panda mubhawa tongogaraaaaaaaa”

Arguably, PushZW favourite  track off the album and it just had to be track number one; this song got us hooked on to the album, there was no way we were gonna end here. The bars from Noble just drop one after another, you enjoy the song throughout, it just flows. Trae Yung’s inclusion was no mistake, her verse (and declaration that she is Queen of Hip Hop) really got us going.

2. Nyanzvi ft BlacPerl

“hanzi nd’chabuda game, havafariri kuona Noble ane Crown/ Hanzi nd’chabuda asi handis’ kubuda seAlbum raJunior Brown”

You know, coming from maBorn Free, this was a perferct song choice. The song that features Masofa Panze Queen, BlacPerl makes for a good partnership. BlacPerl’s ability to smoothly transition between rapping and singing..this young lady is seriously talented, definitely worth keeping an eye on. We can clearly see why the social media circles have been making so much noise about this.

3. Kudakwashe

“…koshesha ruzivo kupinda mari/… tese tirivatadzi muporofita haasi Mwari”

We don’t remember hearing a word of English in this song...yes a single word! Kudakwashe was a purely vernac record. A really deep song that seems to talk about life, its difficulty and people walking together but reminding that the ultimate faith should be placed in God. There is this almost out of body experience that one is prompted to get when they hear this song. The bridge, the chorus, it was just really good. It’s like converting a well written Shona poem to a song.

4. Patinosangana feat Arnold Gara

The guy goes ultra-soft on this one, The Arnold Gara featured song is a very well documented description of long distance relationship pains and longing to be with ones lover. At first we thought it was a mourning song about a lost lover. It can be used in both situations. We would like to focus on Arnold Gara, we haven’t heard of him before but his well-balanced (vocally) chorus and verse on the song we loved a lot, we hope you like it too. We also hope to hear more from him.

5. Supa Sub ft Quonfused

“back on pole position saBev atiza Prophet Magaya”

After maBornFree and Nyanzvi this is the closest to a really free and maybe “turn up” song. Quonfused kills it on the chorus and on his verse in this song that generally says that the industry is boring now and whats neded is the Suer sub – Masofa Panze. Truthfully right no it does look like that is the case. We didn’t know what to do; dance (maclarks) or just enjoy Noble’s wordplay. The song has definite Zim Dancehall Undertones. We did the whole PUUUULOOOO thing when we got the part where Noble ran an undistrupted number of bars rhyming with one rhyme scheme JUST LISTEN TO IT

6. Dai Maiziva ft BlacPerl

We first heard this song at The Shoko Festival 2014. The song is a two pronged story about a girl (BlacPerl) who narrates the unfortunate situation involving an unplanned pregnancy, sexual abuse and prostitution. Noble carries on the song on the second and third verse with a case of an irresponsible musician and lifestyle. The song again has a chilled feel to it, a little more thought provoking like “Kudakwashe”. It was oh so emotional how the song really tackles the issues of the abuse of women in the capacity of mothers and girls at large.

7. Success

Its not the usual to hear Noble rapping over a sampled beat. The instrumental to this song is a lot different from the usual Noble Styles-Maskiri type beats. It’s pretty much about Success, the way one doesn’t understand it or comprehend it. This song is really a “I’m better than yall” clothed in a pseudo message about his inability to understand success.

8. Let me Know

One of the songs with the most different feel on the album is the let me know that features Mr Noxxa. The past couple of weeks we have heard a couple of Mr Noxxa records and concluded that this guy is just NOT LIKED ABOUT ENOUGH. “Let me know” has (we hope this will not be offensive) a feel that can be likened to a great blend between urban grooves and R &B..the blend that was the original Urban grooves sound before Russo came to town. A love song where the girl has started acting up and crossing borders of ratchetry and Noble is just asking the girl to show him love before he thinks there’s no love and moves on. Great verses from Stylz and Mr Noxxa did not slack! Great track all round.

9. “Vakafa vakazorora” featuring Meister and BlacPerl

“Meister, Masofa Panze tapinda, me and my brother in the game takuita Adam na Madinda”

“chinzwa wordplay, right, mashoko aya akutamba sele/ I run this game single handedly saSomandla Ndebele”

A very rare thing happened on the third verse, having three rappers interchanging on one verse, quite impressed. This another favourite in the PushZw team. Its probably the song with the most witty lines in the whole album LOVE IT!

10. Zim Hip Hop

“shona rapper akaita mbiri nemabig moves/ ndiwe unotanga kushedzera kuti ava urban grooves”

This song is an address to the Zim Hip hop industry that he refers to as a person that he is talking to.  A great message that doesn’t target any artist but just urges the industry to make the right decisions for growth and wants a situation of no factions. The song really asks about the elephant in the room which is, why is there such a class system, a disparity between the way rappers who spit in vernacular and those who don’t? Why people like South African Hip Hop more than the local… we could go on but, this song is one of those you have to hear for yourself.

11. Tsamba Yekupedzisira

This is a very personal song whose opening verse is a letter to his parents. It is a praise to his praise for raising him. The next verse is even more, for lack of a better word “sweeeeeeeeeet”. It’s a letter style verse addressing his daughter. The last verse is addressed to his brother, deceased as you will hear at the end of the verse. Krimz produced a really soul full sounding beat to go with the song. Another really properly done song.

Overveiw

Noble Stylez, has grown so much ever since Masofa Panze (the first one). This album is a little more relaxed compared to the first one. The mastering is better, the instrumentals are not ear disturbing, to be honest, this album is one of the best Hip Hop albums released this year if not the best. He chose the features well. We don’t quite know why BlacPerl had to be featured three times but thank goodness the young lady knows how to sing.

What we didn’t like

Well, the album artwork is not as good as his first one, COME ON NOBLE!!

4.0/5.0

The album is available on OLOVA  from googleplay or from OLOVA and from @noblestylz get a copy and hear for yourself!!

@pushzw

MARIA MARIA!! JUNIOR BROWNS MARIA

The year 2014 has been characteristic of a lot of things which includes the silence of Junior Brown. The last bit of that statement changed with a tweet. This weekend after the songs debut on a local station, the MaDrinks rapper announced that anyone who wanted his newest release “Maria” would have to add “atenno” on his Whatsapp list and request to get the song. We did as the rapper ordered and in a jiff, we were added in a group, had the song shared to us and pressed play!

Utterly scary, pure mastery and very Hip Hop.

We really want to go into the deciphering of the lyrics, about how, the almost 7 minute song which has skit before and during, a feature from Gze and adlibs by who we think is Babashupi is a mix of the relationship between the artist and money (Maria), the Maria being the pseudo scary voice in the beginning (who is male and reminds us of listening to DMX’s trilogy Damien when he had a conversation with the mystical character) who seems to be the overbearing influence over the rappers life and how it all makes sense that money would make put you in a position where hood-rats would want your attention… WE COULD GO ON AND ON ALL DAY!

One can’t ignore the could be blasphemous undertone in the last verse, (see why we think it’s scary!), one cant ignore the truth in the message in the song, one cant ignore Gze’s verse which we loved still.

We will not be the ones to kill the sharing by placing a link or anything, get on twitter and get the song from atenno! Till then, we shall be singing the below

“Maria Maria Mariaaaaa, Honayi zvandakuitwa ne Mari iya”

@pushzw

FOUR REASONS WHY ZIM HIP HOP FANS SUCK

A great number of Zimbabweans are deserving of this title but before we go any further, you should know this; It’s not a flattering one. When it comes to music, a lot of people want to be online fans only, they will “like” their favourite artist’s status, they will comment ever so rowdily but do absolutely nothing beyond just that. It’s that friend who only hears that song on radio, or on a friends phone or see’s it on a machine, is quick to whip out their USB cable, a handy memory card or switch on their Bluetooth to get that song, but they NEVER actually make an effort to download it themselves. If you are that one person who always confirms attendance on events but are never seen at the Big Chill, or whichever, if all you do is “like” links but do not have any download history on your phone or PC whatsoever…Then you are as good as those guys who stalk a girl because she has a nice profile pic, and are dumb enough to religiously register your “LIKE” on a comment such as “my tummy is sore”… yes you, YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A FACEBOOK FAN!

This weekend at the Harare gardens, a large number of LOCAL Dancehall artists’ performed at show that had been tagged the ‘Battle of the ghettos’ the place was alive till after four o’clock in the morning. We asked ourselves, how come this hardly happens for Zim-Hip Hop. Most of the time, we run to blame the artists for not trying hard enough, once we are done, we blame the promoters, and if we stop crying about them we go on and pull the ‘hip hop doesn’t have any cooperate support’ line. Now as we happily point our fingers to different stakeholders we forget the proverbial thumb pointing back at us. Here are some of the problems we have with Zim Hip Hop Fans

We always Cry but Never Buy

How many of you who are staunch fans of say, FewKings bought a copy of “The Feeling Aint fair”. Yes we get it that they put it up for download but, you like them so much and you SUPPORT LOCAL MUSIC’ don’t you? How many of copped a disc? How many of you are incessantly complaining about how The MMT-LP is not spread all around the CBD? Yes, we get that they could've done better but more than half of you are in the CBD every day and you just can’t run to Eastgate, the post office or maybe for others Sam Levi or Avondale to get it?  We love having our word on beef, on pictures, on videos, on sex tapes and on songs, we all love being mini bloggers but we still can’t take that $1-5 and buy a CD!

We are top class snobs

We would much rather attend a show with a foreign artist on the line up first before we go and support our own. We somehow think we are better than our own damn countrymen. To top it all off, we are so choosy when it comes to venues. For an example, how many of you would attend a show at The Harare Gardens (Unless foreigners or really rich people endorse it first i.e. HIFA) as opposed to 7 arts. We always feel so entitled to royal treatment so much we want our artists to pull off a Madison Square Gardens show so that we may go. What we forget is that, sometimes it’s not about how classy the venue is, Is it central? Yes, are the hiring charges reasonable? Yes, is it accessible? Yes! That is why some of your artist may choose the rather not so up town venue as compared to another. But you being you, got too much swag right, you would never go a to place that already has a stage built just for musical shows because you are too superstar to pay $5 for your local hip hopper right. You would rather pay $15 for a South African who will give you one hour’s worth of backtracking…where…at the Harare Gardens!

We are stingy, we think Internet is enough

Well it isn’t! We just said in  our opening statements that it isn’t. Do the math, your average producer may charge an artist anything between, $50 and $800 for one song. The artist has to fork out that amount of money eight to twenty one times to come up with a mixtape or album. That makes it on average $450 to $6400 given that we are working with an eight track album. That’s just for the studio time, we haven’t factored in the amount of money spent travelling up and down from home to studio, the amount of money spent printing cd’s, paying for the internet to post links that you wont  click on because “ah well, I’d rather get that [PLACE AMERICAN RAPPERS NAME HERE] album. (mind you, that rapper will only come to Zim when the rest of the world doesn’t like him anymore). After that, the artist has bills to pay and because he has a life too, he has to look presentable to you guys as we all know Zimbabweans love criticising artists on how cheap their dressing looks. After all is said and done, when the artist decides to only stream their music but not actually have it available for download we run out of steam and not care about the album at all. So because you are oh so economical  with your measly couple of dollars, the artist decides to organise a show so he can get some money out of his artistry, then comes the next problem…

We never show up

Album releases, parties, festivals, or just shows, we love saying we are going, but never really go. When the weekend is all said and done, our artist would have had a handful of their friends showing up. Some of the fans would have got free tickets and left early because, somehow its empty. Every single time the artist has to pull a “thanks for the love fam” line coz really he is greatful that he at least a quarter of the people who said they would attend actually did attend. When the absentees, review the show the next morning,  we run to blame the marketing, but forget that, its their marketing that you lied to and said you would attend, the marketing actually did a good job because, you did know about the show, the charge, the venue and what not did you not?. We then say that there is no cooperate support but forget that big money only comes where there are significant numbers to invest in. Ask dancehall fans, when there is show, they all go, when cooperates see this, they invest. But hip hop fans DONT go, when cooperates see this, they WONT take out a cent! So who is the problem, your artist for having a fake facebook fan or you the fan, for only being a fan…on facebook.

So change your ways, be more appreciative, more supportive to any form of Hip Hop, buy the clothing, buy the CD's. Go to the shows. Dont be backseat about it. 

PUSH