A number of Rwandan artistes have embraced the trend of making collaborations with foreign musicians as a way of promoting their music. On July 17, US-based Rwandan R&B maestro Meddy, born Médard Jobert Ngabo, dropped his latest track—“Downtown”—featuring Burundian artiste, Thierry Nish. The song’s video has so far generated 274,635 views on YouTube in just one week. The sultry video was produced and directed by US-based Rwandan record producer Lick Lick. The lyrics of the track are in both Kinyarwanda and English. Like many of his songs, “Downtown’’ is also a love song, in which the two artistes try to persuade a pretty girl by asking her to go downtown for a crazy night out. In the same comportment, Rwandan female music duo, Charly na Nina, have finally released the song they did with Nigerian dancehall singer Orezi, real name Allen Esegine, from Delta State. Known for their banging beats with different artistes such as Geo Steady, Bebe Cool, they have now gone all the way to West Africa where they recorded the single “Lazizi”. The song is three minutes and 27 seconds long, and the audio was made by Rwandan producer Pastor P of Narrow Road Records. It was in Kinyarwanda and Orezi too dropped a few verses in Kinyarwanda, albeit majorly used pidgin. According to Nina, the song is not as new as many think. “It’s a collaboration that we did a few years ago but didn’t get a chance to shoot the video,” she told The New Times. The single had its video premiered on Wednesday July 24. “It’s such an exciting experience to work with Orezi, as he is such a big name in Nigeria, and we wanted to work on this project for some time and it has finally come to life,” Nina told The New Times in an interview on Thursday, adding; “There are more collaborations with foreign artistes coming in the future, as it is our time to push harder music barriers, and do as many collabos from outside Rwanda.” She said that the video was shot in Uganda by Swangz Avenue, and as of Thursday morning, it had 15,639 views on YouTube. editorial@newtimesrwanda.com
