Back in 2007,a young girl with the sickest rap flow disturbed the scene… Arriving with some of the slickest,baddest and illest verses ever laid down on a rap beat. Before her pompous arrival,the rap game had been thoroughly monopolized by a deadlocked Empress,Nazizi. And then some girl from Maragua arrived… Quickly eviscerating Nazizi,claiming her spot and climbing to the highest peaks of female rapdom.
She was playful and yet ferocious,funny and yet vicious,plain and yet funky,laid back and yet bouncy.
We remember STL mostly for her collaboration with Kantai on the classic hit ‘Happy’. And then she followed it up with many other mention-able hits.
Soon after,the girl,who was largely brought up in the Scandinavian Country of Norway,from where she learned her Dutch but still maintained her daddy’s native language, Kikuyu,retreated to Norway for those long sojourns that just wouldn’t end.
Norway is (was) her home anyway,and we can’t blame a sister for feeling homesick,needing to go back home and rest or whatever. After all,it’s while at home that Stella Mwangi,as she famously love to call herself,got involved in the legendary Eurovision Music Contest that saw her rise above the fray and get to be the Official Norwich Representative with her dance-ready club-banger Haba Haba. At Eurovision,STL became the stuff of legend… She would wow crowds with her mesmerizing moves,stirring voice and catchy tune drawing the pride of Norway and even landing coveted collaborations with Western dance legends including Mohombi.
Stella would even be such a household name across the Nordic nation that Anders Behring Breivik ,a lone wolf gunman who would drive into a picnic site and randomly shoot at and kill 68 innocent youth campers would be exposed as an STL hater about whom he had been writing vile racial jibes on his dark,sadistic diary.
After Haba Haba and her catchy Mohombi collaboration,STL continued to remain relevant – and in-touch-even releasing the rousing Hula Hoop and the playful,bubblegum house hit ‘Lookie Lookie’.
Along came the bad girl anthem,‘Bad as I Wanna Be’ with a video as bad as the song; peppered with a fabulous,female machismo,dark backgrounds,spectacular photography and nightmarish imagery.
That was the Stella that we knew and wanted. The Stella who was making waves…The Stella we were proud of and the Stella we identified with. A Stella who with, ‘Take You Back’ made us dance ourselves lame and have wonderful clubbing moments. A Stella who,with Hula Hoop,made us twirl,freely,on the dance floors,singing along, buoyed and ecstatic.
But then that Stella changed. And along came a more political,more agitated,more activism-aligned Stella.
A Stella who suddenly seemed to miss home,want to cause controversy,fought for attention,struggled to keep up with the new cats and struggled to pay homage to her mother tongue,at whatever cost. No matter how dire.
She did the Kikuyu-tinged ‘Biashara ni Biashara’ and old,boring ode to the Kikuyu community’s fabled excellence at entrepreneurship.
It was a silly song. With a silly beat and an even sillier chorus. She even dragged along two popular new-age pop rappers for the Remix,hoping to cause a thunder… But failed spectacularly.
After the Biashara hype started to die down,Stella quickly came back with ‘Koolio’ an eerie musical error-repetitive,annoying,forgettable,bland,plain dumb.
She stopped being the Rap Empress of yore and started mumbling incoherencies in her songs,yapping away the chorus and laughing away the outro.
Stella had now become a joke. A big joke.
Stella Mwangi a.k.a STL
Prior to her steady descent into oblivion and alarming inconsistencies,Stella had secretly recorded a very yucky sex-oriented sub-song with Rapper Collo titled ‘Kudinyana’ or something that silly. She or her team would later leak it,in its entire repulsiveness,to the media and disown it minutes later.
‘Kudinyana’ was the type of song that even untalented rats in the poor alleys of South Tigania would be ashamed or recording-and releasing.
This new Stella was not the same Stella anymore. She was not the girl who gave us that bombastic,grandiloquent ‘Stella Stella Stella’ jam anymore. A song so magisterial,so superb with verses so lethal and bars so sick.
She even cut down her hair. And,from there,she seemed to have lost it all..Along with the hair.
The new Stella seemed to be overtly obsessed with her Kikuyu heritage and that’s where the trouble began. The witty bars were gone,the splendid flow was dead and the wonderful hits were far behind her.
She then hurriedly hooked up with another raunchy Kiambu-based Kikuyu rapper,Njeri,and then they did some other song that was so bad,so juvenile,so prepubescent,it went nowhere.
It wasn’t even a song as such… Just some two Kikuyu girls mindlessly maundering over a cheap beat,laughing and main a fool of themselves. And music.
The shame-worthy collaboration titled ‘Miti Ni Dawa’ only garnered some measly 22,000 views on YouTube,3 months after release.
More trouble followed with her jumping onto the Obe Baba Remix,a song originally done by little down trouble-causing rapper Raj. Nothing to write about here. This was Stella yet again… With her loud Kikuyu lines,shallow lyricism and Stella treating a song like a late afternoon Ruracio laugh session.
And with Chukua Hatua,Stella fell even further off the radar,delved into topics she clearly wasn’t clearly acquainted with,topics her fans didn’t seem to care about and themes best left to the likes of Eric Wainaina and the Mandela-led Sarabi band.
Also,coming through with her heavy Kikuyu and general meaninglessness,Chukua Hatua was destined for the garbage bin. And that’s where it ended.
Stella must restructure herself; Look into herself,analyze herself,prob herself,better herself.
She must know where she lost the plot,must bring back her inspiring ghetto-fabulous persona,must reclaim her glory,must go back to the flawless lyricism and invincible rap prowess.
Stella MUST wave goodbye to the Kikuyu gibberish that she’s been spewing of late. Must understand that the times are changing and that the pro-Maragua phases she’s been struggling through are seriously not working for her.
She must also agree that her vernacular experiments have failed. Terribly. And purpose to overhaul her current stale act.
STL must wake up from her destructive post-colonial Ngugi wa Thiong’o Kikuyu fantasies and get back to the awesome lyricism,get back to the hard-hitting verses,the fabulous bars,majestic beats and making authentic universal hits.
It’s a shame to watch what has become of one of Kenya’s most distinguished Rap Pioneers. And a pity to watch her self-destruct. With silly kindergarten pop lines and not-so-funny Kikuyu bars.
What a sad day for Hip Hop.
