As one of the most judges at the KTN House truth display Sasini Talanta Mtaani, many have come to grasp Robert Waweru Kiboy aka Wawesh because the no-nonsense pass judgement on who says it as it’s.
Contestants dread him all the way through auditions for his straight-shooting, analytical and well-informed judgement, due to his deep working out of popular culture and the inventive global normally.
Few contestants know that this hard pass judgement on is among the perfect showbiz personalities in Kenya.
Few leisure personalities in East Africa lately can equivalent Wawesh’s prowess as an artiste, tune manufacturer and director in addition to mentor and researcher.
And the person who holds each Kenyan and Swedish citizenship is writing a contemporary bankruptcy; looking for to steer how folks view African showbiz.
He’s a person on a undertaking to present African tune a divergent tune id with a novel cultural base.
To many Hip Hop enthusiasts of his technology, the point out of Wawesh brings with it nostalgic reminiscences of his 2006 hit rap music Wawesh Mjanja. This used to be from his 20-track compilation album, It’s Supposed to Be, whose different fashionable music is Wawero – additionally known as Songs of Wawesh.
He made his mark as a rapper, addressing social problems going through city adolescence.
“On December 13, 2008, on the top of this country’s post-election violence, we had camped along with my circle of relatives on the Kiwi Resort in Nairobi. Our undertaking used to be to absorb what Nynke Nauta, the Holland tune promoter who had helped produce the unique Kenyan Hip Hop tasks with Kalamashaka and Ukoo Flani Mau Camp, had began,” says Wawesh.
“The luck tales of productions like Kilio Cha Haki have been inspiring. It’s via those tasks that I met Nik Punk, Moses, Muriuki, Stan and lots of others that now shape the Kenyan Hip Hop legacy.”
The artiste, 46, used to be born in Kiambu to Lucy Njeri. She labored as a taxi driving force and used to be buddies with veteran singer Tabu Ley. Within the mid-eighties, she moved in a foreign country with then eight-year-old Wawesh to search for greener pastures.
Wawesh says his organic father died in an outburst of rage towards foreigners after UN troops attacked fugitive warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid’s command centre in Mogadishu in 1993.
On the time, along with his mom, they referred to as Karlskoga Town in Sweden his house. She died there, mysteriously.
Karlskoga presented Wawesh a possibility to be informed, produce and collaborate in opposition to an ongoing realisation of self as an inventive artiste.
This merit driven him to pursue a qualified profession within the leisure industry.
Due to the Scandinavian State, Wawesh used to be given sources and start-up beef up that will assist him discovered the BLaO Leisure AB manufacturing corporate with Martin Karlsson and Noah Hagan from Ghana. Between 1996-2007, it grew right into a recognised logo within the town of Gothenburg.
The corporate gained a number of awards and were given two Grammy nominations.
“We had Tommy Mottola sending songwriters like Kara DioGuardi to our penthouse studio in Gothenburg as we had a just right recognition and affiliations within the business throughout Stockholm,” says Wawesh.
Then Wawesh were given the urge to go back to Kenya. He sought after to get again to his homeland and use his experience to develop the native business.
“Once I set to work with the Nynke Nauta group in 2008, my imaginative and prescient didn’t fit what used to be occurring at their Rags to Data studio on the Buruburu buying groceries centre. This could also be the place our maximum celebrated and deserving kings would in any case get the risk to file the vintage Mwanzo album. This used to be the start of the crowd you understand as Sauti Sol,” says Wawesh.
The daddy of 2 remembers the straightforward table they have been the usage of, soundcard, microphone and a pc as they set out to beginning generating Mwanzo.
On Sauti Sol
“Up to I produced them, I will be able to humbly say that no person truly made Sauti as they have been referred to as then. They made themselves. They caught to their plan and instinct; their inclination, and conviction that in the event that they have been affected person sufficient a fellow village mate would go back from a promised land, attach and allow their future,” he says.
It used to be Wawesh who suggested the boy band to modify their identify to Sauti Sol (Sol which means solar in Swedish). After the Mwanzo album challenge luck, Rags to Data used to be reworked to Penya Africa.
His focal point and means has now shifted from the ‘Wawesh Mjanja’ Hip Hop really feel to a common original expression of an African sound.
Via his Penya Africa solid, Wawesh has been looking for to play an energetic position in inspiring and enabling native musicians to transform influential brokers of trade by means of supporting them in generating, distributing and selling tune.
Different artistes he has labored with come with Stan (Kenya Debut), Dela (Paukwa), Sauti Sol (Sol Filosofia) and Muthoni the Drummer Queen (The Human Situation).
Wawesh additionally runs the Uwezo Consciousness Organisation, a non-profit outfit that champions world adolescence building the usage of nationwide media, wellbeing, generation and entrepreneurship.
However the adventure to luck has no longer at all times been clean.
The artiste admits that there were errors made alongside the best way, some that drove him into persistent melancholy. “For a few years, I tormented myself and used to be no longer in a position to take rate of my existence. I’m a dreamer and misplaced myself within the creativeness of accomplishing good things. The combo of being pessimistic and positive on the identical time brought about me loads of needless friction,” he says.
Lately, then again, Wawesh is in a just right position.
“I’m proud of what I’m now doing with Sasini Talanta Mtaani. It’s about ability seek, mentorship and empowerment. It’s giving existence to a brand new technology of inventive stars. It’s giving again to society. There can simplest be one Sauti Sol. That we have got. Who’s subsequent?” he says.