Monster and Tha Dawg Fearlessly Address The #HipHopCapital’s Harsh Realities in the Visual Lamentation ‘Ndoifamba Sei’

By Takudzwa Kadzura 

Hip-hop as a tool of artistic expression and liberation has always served humanity with unparalleled lyricists who chronicle our stories of pain and bliss in ways that we actually resonate with. Life is inherently riddled with puzzling circumstances and we always get to a point where we interrogate ourselves if by any chance, we will make it. Ndoifamba Sei by Monster and Tha Dawg is an embodiment of this.

Tha Dawg and Monster. 

Recently, we have noticed murmurs on social media of a brewing wrangle in which the parties are Bulawayo and Harare rappers with the #HIPHOPCAPITAL claims. The song does not talk about the aforementioned but this critique finds it perfectly fitting to be a soundtrack for hip-hop in Bulawayo.

For Monster and Tha Dawg, it is not close to any wild guess that they are actually scared about life’s bleak adventures – Nzira yacho ine munzwa ndoifamba sei? Prince Arthur Mutize (Monster) and Tanaka Chimeta (Tha Dawg), who are in their late 20s, are not spared from the insecurities and existential threats of an ailing economy, aggravated by the fact that they are rappers from Bulawayo – Hupenyu hwangu ihondo.

Of late, hip-hop artists from the City of Kings and Queens came together with one voice proclaiming that their city is the #HIPHOPCAPITAL in Zimbabwe. That indeed signals an apparent harsh reality of the city having a number of talented chaps who never get the spotlight on a wider national scale. And this might have inspired songs like Ndoifamba Sei? – minzwa yandatsika got the big dawg limping.

The video for Ndoifamba Sei is not anything lesser than a perfectly executed storyline. Semi-nude nuns with black lips of fairly applied make-up and candles hardly lighting up the warehouse provide images that adequately tell the story of a youth mustering all their might to make ends meet. Monster, frightening as the name, has marked his entry in the game and for a debut video, this is a bold move for someone who is mindful of maneuvering today’s streets.

Tha Dawg’s verse adds new flavor and clarity to the rhetoric when he says there is no road at all. At 25, he is fed up, and this is the stark reality for most youths who by this time would have completed an exhausting college life with a new wave of responsibilities kicking in – and every month is a rent royal rumble, moms vakuda hupfu havangamone ngano.

Monster is working on an EP that will drop at a date to be later announced, whilst Tha Dawg has promised fans of an album on the 1^st of August! Happening in the Hip-Hop Capital [a contentious matter if you ask].

Check out this YouTube link to watch the Ndoifamba Sei video by Monster and Tha Dawg, do and leave a comment.😃