AS THE MUSIC FRATERNITY continues to mourn rapper Jay Polly who passed away last week, there is a big gap in Rwandan hip hop that the rapper has left and the question now is if there are new rappers in the making who have the potential to keep the legacy. According to music manager Alex Muyoboke, Jay Polly was the king of Hip Hop who paved way for the new generation and whose replacement will be difficult to find. “We have young rappers who have potential to take on the mantle and make Hip Hop great again. I see the likes of Racine, Bushali and B Threy raising the Hip Hop flag high and I believe they can do it and even achieve what their brother did not,” Muyoboke told The New Times. Muyoboke appealed to the new Hip Hop generation to learn from Jay Polly’s successful career in the genre. “He [Jay Polly] can inspire them to reach even beyond horizons. It’s just a matter of working hard. Rwanda has talent and I have a feeling that, with the talents we have, the genre can be ranked among the most successful in the country,” he added. For showbiz presenter Phil Peter, however, it is impossible to get Jay Polly’s replacement but he believes that Rwanda has talent that can even do more than what Jay Polly offered in the Hip Hop music industry during his career. “A true artist builds his/her legacy their way. Jay Polly built his legacy his way, Riderman is doing it his way and so is Ish Kevin, and many others. So who am I to compare an artist with another?” Phil Peter pointed out. “Artists do music with different ambitions and visions. There won’t be another Jay Polly, but there is a possibility that our music industry can produce an incredible rapper who can even surpass what Jay Polly has achieved,” he added. Showbiz journalist Luckman Nzeyimana, who has been hosting a lot of talents via his TV talk show ‘Versus’ shared the same sentiments with Phil Peter. Nzeyimana says that the fact that the rapper is irreplaceable is that the current artists are driven by business and not passion. “The new generation is more focused on the benefits they can get out of music and care less about passion and what drives them to do music. That’s why it’s difficult to get one who can fill Jay Polly’s shoes. You can’t find any. He was exceptional during his days and so were the rappers of his generation and this is something that the new generation must emulate,” he said. Nzeyimana has confidence in the new Hip Hop generation including the likes of B Threy, Bushali and Kivumbi who he believes have the capacity to write in Rwandan Hip Hop music but still doubts that they can achieve it because there is no longer unity in the hip hop game because today’s artists are driven by what they can get in music. “The likes of Jay Polly, his Tuff Gang crew and other rappers of his generation were successful because they were united and driven by passion to make Rwandan Hip Hop great, which is completely the opposite for the new generation. They are not united, everybody is on their own and their efforts are hence separated. They want to do hip Hop because of what they can get from it,” he claimed. In the current digital world, the new generation has an opportunity to promote their music and push it to a wider audience. This is, according to Nzeyimana, a big platform that their brothers including Jay Polly did not get the chance to explore in their early days but a big platform the new generation can make good use of if they are to spearhead the dominance of the genre in Rwandan music. “You see one coming and going, another coming and going. They are that way. Of course they can do it; they can take on the hip hop genre but they need to work for it. Doing it is one thing but achieving it is another thing. To achieve it, they need to be united, put passion in what they do and use the platform they have to bring Hip Hop back on top,” he said.
