Askari Ako Jaba

Judging from song titles alone, this one is possibly the silliest on the album. It's a song I wrote to a beat I found on YouTube and thought up with the aim of adding some strong Kenyan flavour with a kapuka/gengetone vibe. With that in mind, I really had to look no further than JESHI, given some of the slappers they've dropped so far (my favourite being "Ibambe") which should have gotten way more traction in my opinion. It would also be easy to organise since its members also run Black Hole Records, with whom I did all the work on Not a Rapper and a lot of the work on this album.

Once I was done writing my lyrics, I asked AndyBolo to send me some kapuka/gengetone beats, and the one that I landed on was slower and higher pitched in its original form, so it wasn't quite capturing the vibe I wanted; I had Andy change it to its current state on his end after speeding it up and pitching it down on Audacity.

I was really disappointed that Oloso couldn't get on the song due to his very busy work schedule, because the same thing happened with "Nimesota" when I did Not a Rapper. The first 8 bars of the second verse were supposed to be his, but after finding out he wouldn't be able to do it and getting no luck with two other potential features—one was unreachable and the other turned me down—I said, "Fuck it, I'll just have to do it myself." I came at my second verse with the same silly energy that spawned the song in the first place, and Andy and BH did a fantastic job matching it.

Having recorded my initial parts for the song in late November 2021, it then just sat idle for ages thereafter: the guys had issues with their computer shortly after I finished recording my vocals on the rest of the album, then there was fulfilling their other commitments and trying to get Oloso in the booth. We eventually finished the song just over nine months later, but I didn't mind the wait in the end because I think it's an absolute banger.