Remember when August Alsina’s management team decided to put Octopizzo on blast after there were rumors that he had collaborated with him (August) on the track “Could Be Us”? August Alsina and co. denied any involvement with the record. We were quite shocked, right? Guess how shocked I was when I found the record online; same beat, same hook but by a totally different crew? Octopizzo denied knowing any of them, saying he had to look them up because he had absolutely no idea who BKR All Stars were.
Here’s their record. Whether you’re a fan or not, you probably know the Octopizzo record.
So I let that one slide but there’s a Jacob Latimore record called “The Real” that came out after Octopizzo’s “Utanisho”. When I asked him about it, he said that he needs the hype to go up before commenting on it. We still have no official statement from Octopizzo about this but what we know for sure, is that iTunes can’t allow you to upload material (and make money off it) that you don’t rightfully own. Is it possible that he leased the beat?
Khaligraph Jones loves to jump on catchy Hip Hop beats. From records like “F*** Off” which was on The Game’s instrumental for “Jesus Piece”, Yego (Young Thug’s “Power” beat) to most recently, Micasa Sucasa, a collaborative effort between himself and Cashy, the original beat was used on Mobb Deep’s “Hell on Earth”. I asked why he loves to remix records, he said that he doesn’t remix tracks as I called it, every once in a while he decides to jump on an instrumental that has been used, “Which I believe every rapper does, only that people will recognize mine more since I’m outchea major.” He said.
He recently just released the video to his track “Naked”, which was released over a year ago. It was produced by Dennis Beatz, mixed and mastered by Motif.
The reason the album came out this year is because, he says, he had done over 10 videos in 2015 and he never found the appropriate time to release it.
Khaligraph linked up with Dennis Beatz online and he says that he has produced two more records on his forthcoming album. No, Naked is not going to be on the album because he has other doper tracks.
What about this track called “She Just Wanna” by “Go Yayo” which has the same exact beat as “Naked”? Khali denied knowing Go Yayo and said that “Whoever he is doesn’t have the rights of ownership.” My question on him taking legal action was evaded, maybe because Go Yayo isn’t really popping like that.
Now, to the story at hand. Norwegian based, Kenyan rapper STL has been in the country since December last year. She even performed at the first edition of Industry Nite and has been doing her fair rounds across Kenyan radio and TV to promote her self titled EP (I think). There was a time she took a picture with Trey Songz and even performed on the stage with him in Norway and she’s always flying the Kenyan flag high abroad and we’re happy about that.
Well, at an interview with Citizen TV’s 10 over 10 hosts, Joey Muthengi and Willis Raburu, she may have said that she battled American rapper Xzibit when she “was like 13.” They even tagged him on the tweet:
GIRL POWER @StellaMwangi: I was battling rapper Xzibit @Xzibit when I was like 13 #10over10 pic.twitter.com/tQyCq01qkp
— Citizen TV Kenya (@citizentvkenya) January 13, 2017
They say that the world is such a small place but what’s even smaller, is the internet. We know that now, for sure. Xzibit of course saw this tweet and Xzibit denied battling STL. The US west coat rapper responded with:
https://twitter.com/xzibit/status/820119076991365120
My take,
We really don’t need to do this. If a collaboration happened with an international artist or a meeting of any sort, let it be real. Let’s be so much about the music, put it on a pedestal so high that it would be hard to talk about African Hip Hop without saying Kenya stands out so that’s a definite go to place if you need a collaboration from Africa. Less talk, more work.
