STD

In my opinion, this is definitely the silliest, most light-hearted song on this album, and makes for a really fun note to end it on. While I'd only ever thought about the song in terms of how it ends the story of Sippin' and Trippin', AndyBolo pointed out in the studio that he also sees it as a fun way of highlighting real sexual health struggles and situations that many young Kenyans go through and can relate to. It's only fitting then that he was the one who came up with the warning in the chorus that he recorded himself: "Ogopa STD!"

I wrote this song to a Congolese-style afro drill beat I found on BeatStars, and that gave me the idea of having G'zay work on a benga/rhumba drill beat, which he really liked when I first pitched it to him. For the guitar sample, I first reached out to a guitarist I found on YouTube called Blessed Ben, but things didn't quite pan out with him. I later reached out to a producer called Ben Theuri, who I'd been following on Instagram for a little while, and while (in his own words) he had never worked on anything benga/rhumba before, he took some time to do his research, and eventually hit an absolute home run with the sample. With the new beat and its different feel, I had to make some adjustments to the lyrics and rewrite the outro, but most of the lyrics remained the same.

While I was plotting on featuring Lilmaina on "Wake Up", I also thought about having him use the silly voice he does on some of his videos for some ad-libs I'd already recorded, which I felt would add to the light-heartedness of the song. He did his thing brilliantly once we were done with "Wake Up" and I'm really happy with how it turned out in the end.