House in the Jungle

A set of two halves, each with its own unique remix of Kanye West’s Power. First, mainly some local, African and Kwaito House featuring: Stella Mwangi, Makadem and Nickstyles’ Bonoko (remix) – pity this tune hasn’t made it past Kenyan audiences // DJ Cleo, In-cha, Professor and Speedy reppin’ for msanzi // D’Banj’s controversial club banger, Oliver Twist// etc etc.

The second half mainly contains jungle-inspired, DnB-inspired and such high-tempo stuff including: Two of the most hated on songs in the Kenyan twitverse, Bamzigi’s Bachette and Muthoni DQ’s Welcome To The Disco // A cool Just A Band collabo with Juliani off their “82” album // Loefah and The Prototypes reppin’ from beyond the motherland.

Last one of this month and prolly the next one too. See y’all in December.

As usual, you can download this HERE

Nicole's Room

Okay, okay, okay... I was half inspired by Liv's take of Drake's tune, Marvin's Room - she's calling it Marvin's SQ - and the vulgar audacity of the Nicole-Muturi phone conversation that has been doing the rounds on this here internets all week. So here's something like a mashup with Jojo and Swahili Nation providing extra vocals. I must warn this stuff is NSFW unless you rock earphones or something. Yeah, lets have a good week then.

The art:



The music:

Madly Normal... Normally Mad...

What I find most beautiful about the concept of beauty is that it is yet to be patented. No one can claim full intellectual property rights over it and the continues to be a cacophony of conflicting theories and tall tales from both academic and non-academic quarters regarding the supposed inventor; be it Darwin or the owners of capital, or ad agencies or even that one twisted chap who started lusting after a motherly news anchor and spread his gospel across social networks. The fact remains that no one has had the guts to come forward and claim creator rights to it. Therefore, in the meantime, it ideally remains held in common trust(but not necessarily pro rata) by every individual and adapted in the same way - individually.

This will apply more or less to the beauty of all things, and most especially, the beauty of the mind. Our every interpretation of the workings of each other's mind, our appreciation of the thought processes involved is a single unique process that cannot be replicated by another human being. However, the sense of community obviously overpowers that of individuality and thus walls, ceilings and floors must be built to box in the extents of how we interact with our own thought processes as well as that of others. This works well for the most of us but others are herded in to the "crazy" corner, or as the politically correct would put it, these are the folks we call "the mentally disabled". Folks many times shunned, many times mistreated, many times misunderstood, many times hard to understand and many times a source of horror and disgust. They are not the same, they aren't Martians either.

In as much as this group seems to be so different from the rest of us, we quickly forget that no two human beings are the same. No one stops to think that this individuality, this sense of personality and character could just be an individual measure in the Protractor of Madness. Viewed through this lens, "normal" becomes an abnormal word to use for what we do and who we are. The fact that we like a particular colour, that we hate certain types of food, that we may or may not be hopeless romantics, that we are Justin Bieber fans, that we are Jay-Z fans,that some of us laugh even when nothings funny, that some of us cry with joy, that we scream when we are angry, that we are attracted to tall boys or short girls - all these normal things suddenly start to come out as peculiar! Yes, an accepted from of peculiarity...

Perhaps if we were more inclined to this type of thinking, persons with mental disabilities would not really be perceived as a minority group.Maybe more of us would be willing to seek help from psychiatrists when things are going haywire.Maybe then, many of us would not be so afraid to discover oursleves and embrace anything negative about ourselves. Maybe it would be easier to interact with them and give them a less strained form of relationship and interaction, I don't know. What i submit to you today, however, is that "Normal" is a mental disability too, one that does not apparently require immediate treatment.

Yesaterday was World Mental Health Day. I marked it by remembering (nothing more, nothing less) yes, remembering the words of my mother when she warned me never to take marijuana or the cranial nuts would fall loose:

"You have weak nerves in your genes, if you want to go absolutely mad, smoke that stuff. I'm not joking by the way!"

Some expert of mental health also came to KTN Studios in the morning and said something I found really interesting (of course I am quoting him out of context to make my own humourous aka malicious point):

"The first way a person with mental illness can heal is suicide..."

Anyway, anyway ... you too can reflect upon the state of mental health around the world today by getting your hands on these two amazing movies on the subject as recommended by me ( ALAS, this was the whole point of this blog post, everything else up there is a filler lol!!):

Mary And Max


One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Improvs

My first and second-last mix of this month (I’m set to be very, very,VERY busy with major exams till the end of November - your best wishes are welcome too!!). Well, its basically an improv set across a bunch of genres in a touch and go way, not knowing where each next track would lead me. Some of the highlights: More Kenyan talent showcased via some nu-soul by Fena Gitu and a chilled out Camp Mulla // New tracks from Ms. Dynamite (take a listen to the original single though) and Young Jeezy // Moody sounds from Pine Marten, Frank Ocean and Bon Iver // etc. etc.

As usual, you can download the set HERE

Enjoy...

An Apple A Day, Not Today...

"Shit," he said, "everything shits until it dies." _ Charles Bukowski, 'Less Delicate Than The Locust'

I am terribly paranoid about the whole concept of old age. Its like having nothing else to drink all day except that neglected, already-opened packet of juice that stayed forgotten in the fridge for the better part of a year. Something that everyone says is essentially good for you (Vitamin C, lovely white hair, wisdom, retirement benefits etc etc) as opposed to the alternative unhealthy excesses (of fatty foods, alcohol, drugs and basically youth) without a detailed description of how whatever it is we are forced to take actually tastes like.

And now as the average human mortality age gradually lowers, older folks, you know, the 60-to-infinty year old demographic starts to stand out as an endangered sub-species... as the ones who are left look less and less their age thanks to advancements in medicine and technology, we may soon forget what it means to be old. We will however not forget what it sounds like to be old, as the old will always have the loudest lamentations when another one of their kind passes on. Loudly voicing their doubts whether the ones that are left behind will even bother filling the out of fashion shoes of the deceased. Whether we who are left behind will finally be able to focus on problems outside our own selves, manage to even have a plan for the next day and ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING...

And they will cocoon among themselves, group together, and repeat among themselves stories of greatness that we have never heard of because we are too busy trying to #FreeThisRapper #FreeThatDJ and that kind of thing. And then they will occasionally bark the random adage or parable to those playing out in the yard. And the boredom of it all will even kill a bunch of them for the sake of a change of activity!!

Hmm, that shit is scary as hell, full-stop...

***

So, Apple Inc. have just announced Steve Jobs' demise after and amazing career that brought us iPods and every i-Thing we can think of. Wangari Maathai, our very own Nobel Laureate, activist, environmental champion and perhaps our best prototype of positive feminism is set to be cremated soon. Here goes a cheesy tribute:

Its an adage: An apple a day, or so they say
But what becomes of the apple trees on that day
The gardener's away and won't ever return again
Another adage: Where there's trees, there's rain
An apple a day, but not today, not today
A torrent of rain, but never again, never again

Goodnight/Goodmorning...