The first lesson I learnt is that a careless song title is all that a contestant needs to lose the top honors. If in doubt, ask Bruce Melodie. In Fact, Bruce Melodie will curse the day he penned the song, Ndakwanga to his grave. He will further curse the demon that led him to embolden the title’s message with the English lines: I hate you! I hate you! Because of Ndakwanga, Knowless is now rich. I know some jealous people out there are saying “No! She’s not rich! 24 million francs does not make one rich, you fool!” Well, neither does it make one poor either. Because of PGGSS5, I now know which musicians smoke weed. Like one of them who was a loser but not a total loser in that he was not at the very tail end of the list. But neither was he far at all from it. I also know why Bruce Melodie likes to wear specs every time, yet he is not a red eye man like Rafiki or Jay Polly. Who is a red eye man? A man whose eyes are perpetually red-shot for reasons that are best-known to him but unknown to the rest of us. Still with lessons learnt, I think that the promotional tag line for PGGSS5 was all wrong. Jyana N’injyaana means keeping up with the times, and it can’t be keeping up with the times if I have to be forced to watch a musician that begun to sing before I became a teenager. As the competition ran its course, the artists of course had to enjoy massive airplay and media coverage. They had to be all over the place like a plague; On Igihe, Inyarwanda, YegoB, in The New Times, Izuba Rirashe and others all fought to outdo each other in giving these artistes the big splash. Because of that massive airplay that bordered on the outright monotonous and annoying, it made me come up with a new phrase: “All over the airwaves like Bruce Melodie on a Sunday evening”. Another lesson learnt is that if you want to make it in this fiercely competitive business of singing, you had better hustle hard like a sword. Not like a Nigerian. Actually, you had better hustle hard like Senderi International Hit Chris Brown Mayweather. The sheer rate at which Mayweather comes up with new names for himself is in itself a hustle. Other people would have run short of catchy and convincing names already. So the hustle in Senderi’s musical life is real in that way. In fact, my sources in the music/beer circles have alleged that Senderi may soon baptize himself Senderi International Mayweather Knowless. Such is his addiction to associating his brand name with winners. Had it not been for fear of what fate could befall him if he added the president’s name to his portfolio, I suspect that Senderi would by now be Senderi International Hit Mayweather Knowless Kagame.
