The Return of the ‘Original Gevhas’ – Sinbad 90 and Jnr Brown Release an OGs, Hustler-Themed Single ‘Magevha Ayaya’

By Takudzwa Hillary Chiwanza 

When it comes to delivering a hard-hitting, thoroughly convincing, and catchy street-themed ode to the game and its hustlers, trust Dollasign Music, Big Boy Business and Conquering Music to do an enviably ingenious job that leaves even the most rabidly obdurate skeptic with a solid conclusion: “mastery of perfection.”

The fresh, incendiary single Magevha Ayaya by the game’s respected ‘Original Gevhas’ – the OG's, viz.  Sinbad 90 and Jnr Brown; with Fyah King and I-Pro on production and engineering – deserves some attention.

Magevha Ayaya, the latest fiery, hustler-themed Zim Hip Hop song, sees veteran producer I-Pro giving the single an icing on the cake with his exquisitely immaculate mixing and mastering; his final touch lending the sizzling song its irresistible replay value.

It is an easy listen on the ear, particularly for staunch Sinbad and Jnr Brown loyalists; it is a single reverberating understated elegance. And it is inundated with one over-arching motif throughout: hustle smart and hard, be real, and stay unwaveringly loyal to the game and its streets; like a real gevha.

 

Sinbad 90 Abets the Exoneration of the ‘Legend’ Called Jnr Brown

The single mirrors powerful graphic allusions of the game’s unforgivingly brute streets and the hustlers’ contradictions: such allusions are aptly painted with rousing precision and effortless brilliance conveyed via Sinbad 90’s gritty and defiant verses; together with Jnr Brown's undeniably catchy hooks.

It’s as if Jnr Brown is relentlessly sipping from his vast artistic experience 24/7 when it comes to choruses. His hooks stick with you even without playing his songs and those he features on for lengthy stretches of time.

When a catchy hook from a yesteryear hit invades your haphazard stream of consciousness, you immediately get gripped with a pressing need to lay your hands on new Jnr Brown songs. His hooks are the complete rapper’s combo.

Jnr Brown vindicates his legendary status as Zim Hip Hop's [often understated] iconoclast. Jimmy is the game's towering luminary – even though certain discourses within the game reflect non-contextual listeners and critics who frequently indulge in the hideous business of throwin' dirt on his name. If we are to use the game's lingua franca anyway.

The enigmatic and charismatic “legend of Jnr Brown”, deemed sacred well until Zim Hip Hop MCs such as Jungle Loco and the late luminary Calvin burst such a bubble, now lies prone to being discredited simply because Jnr Brown – and other longstanding MCs regarded as OG's – refuses to conform to the metric demands of a rapidly commercialized rap game; they cannot afford to capitulate to superficial determinants of what marks/defines a successful Zim Hip Hop rapper and Zimbabwean musician at large.

Notwithstanding this, Jnr Brown’s stock endures such changes in the game. Their [Sinbad and Breezy] bars tell us that they consider these markers of artistic success in contemporary Zimbabwean [urban] music to be vapid.

The OGs seemingly prefer their old-fashioned but contextually relevant approach to the game – command concrete street cred; online numbers are useless and not contextual if they do not translate into real-time impact in the streets; and, let your [honourable and earnest] hustling be an attestation of a rapper c0mmitted to the culture whenever you step in the booth.

Jnr Brown chants in the convincingly solid hook, an easy sing-along, hitting back at unrepentant critics while asserting the OGs' worth in the game.

Say the name, say the name; Munenge muchitsvaga fame; We're the realest in the game; Bigg Dogg, Rayden; Akuballer zvekare magevha ayaga; Akuballer zvekare magevha ayaya

 

This somewhat conservative approach to the game (realness to the culture) makes the OGs’ relations with some sections of the industry’s younger participants and followers a tad acerbic, nay, even overwhelmingly so.

(This is evidenced by the fact that Jnr Brown, Tulk Munny, and Silent Killer, ft. Olembe, all fired lyrical missiles towards the dominance of youthful competitor Holy Ten, in the songs Baba Bona, MaHighlights, and Batai Mbavha Iyo respectively. Any commentary on Magevha Ayaya as such should be ineluctably gleaned within this context, but without overstating such emphasis – the OGs are doing their thing regardless of palpable external influences and industry developments.)

 

The Brilliant Production of the Unmatched Fyah King

Magevha Ayaya features an unlikely name to those who confine their sonic biases within the four corners of what is called Zimbabwean Hip Hop. Fyah King, the inimitable producer mostly known as the magic-hands and ears of Conquering Music, is the name.

Fyah King's kingly touch on the gevha-laden instrumental – in a conflated efforts with I-Pro – makes the song an incontrovertible and exceedingly palpable hustlers’ anthem. Put succinctly, the two producers collectively announce the boldly defiant return of the OGs – “akuballer zvekare magevha ayaya” …

Interestingly, the gevhas hadn’t gone anywhere worryingly remote and alien. No. They were out posted in the unkind streets, busy hustling. Whatever the connotations of that word [hustling].

They were scrounging an honourable and earnest livelihood in this contradictory postcolonial capitalist reality of African concrete jungle (to quote from Bob Marley). Stepping a legal line or two is still honourable in the world of a gevha.

The express and implicit insinuation from Sinbad and Jnr Brown is that urban hustling in Zimbabwe's post-settler nightmare threatens musicians' sanity, ingenuity, and material ambitions of wealth and success.

So, “do what you gotta do, take money, make money”. In the classic gevharesqué sense of that whole insinuation, implicitly, and expressly. (The quote in this paragraph is from a Sinbad and Breezy collab, Do You What You Do, released many years ago. We shall briefly return to this notion.)

Still on Fyah King, the talented producer draws inspiration from his infinite fountain of enduring experience to show ardent followers of Zimbabwe's c0ntemporary urban music dynamics that ReggaeDancehall and Hip-Hop cultures, in Zim and globally, are essentially a single, indivisible entity. A marriage in which one cannot do without the other.

Whether in dancehall or rap spaces, Fyah King is a genuine musical genius. His artistic ingenuity as a music producer is rock-solid. The new single speaks volumes of this truism. Fyah King worked closely with Soul Jah Love on many songs under the Conquering imprint.

Theirs was an organic chemistry of producer and performer not only within the bounds of ZimDancehall but permeating the entirety of contemporary Zimbabwean [urban] music.

The auditory magic-man of Conquering Music, Fyah King, dispels the grossly ill-perceived notion reigning supreme among the younger followers of the two related genres – that ZimDancehall and Zim Hip Hop should be locked in a competitive mind-set; a wrong consciousness that precludes the production and proliferation of “real art.”

 

What do Sinbad 90 and Jnr Brown Hope to Convey in New Release?

What Magevha Ayaya by Sinbad 90 feat. Jnr Brown proffers to the rappers’ enclave of unflinchingly loyal audiences (and, much more profoundly, to naysayers as well) is a rap exposition of glorified street eloquence; an eloquence couched in affable simplicity and familiarity. An eloquence extricated from the trappings of didactic banality which some street-conscious MCs are wont to dish out to their audiences.

With the reliable expertise of I-Pro and Fyah King, Jnr Brown and Sinbad 90 convey their realistically relatable raps with a sense of familiar comfort – their sound remains refreshingly authentic, enough to procure a fairly sizable number of new converts. The rappers’ ease on the cold instrumental allows them to spit cold flows that one cannot afford to rubbish.

 Because the j0b done in Magevha Ayaya is nothing short of a “mastery of perfection”, it is a sign of irredeemable stubbornness if those who claim to be hip hop loyalists do not put the tune on repeat. You simply have to.

A New Sound That Retains Its OG-Street-Influenced Identity

All this sonic expertise and experience implies that Sinbad 90 and Jnr Brown were compelled to proffer a refreshing hustler-themed/gevha sound different from their first collaboration graced by Take Fizzo on production – Do What You Gotta Do – where, in a similar fashion with Magevha Ayaya, Jnr Brown delivered a powerful hook that gracefully complemented Sinbad's raw, no-holds-barred, slang-laden, and intelligently defiant bars.

Perhaps, Jnr Brown, – who shared indelible flashes of understated elegance with Tehn Diamond and Take Fizzo as Few Kings – is a benevolent, villainous action-hero in his stylized carpe diem motif emceeing arc – he gracefully embraces Sinbad’s overtures to be an accomplice on an unapologetic song about street gwans; in the process seizing this opportunity to temporarily relieve his loyal support base of the musical starvation he wittingly and unwittingly subjects them to.

With this, Sinbad shines with Jnr Brown. And Jnr Brown shines with Sinbad. Where Take Fizzo once mediated this gevha alliance, Fyah King and I-Pro do so with resolute and gifted dexterity; a newfound balance. Such production-based permutations and cross-genre collaborations are always needed.

 

The Clear Message by Sinbad and Jnr Brown in ‘Magevha Ayaya’

 The joint exudes what we once wrote about regarding Zimbabwe’s ailing political economy – that hustlenomics is the 263’s default hegemonic order now. A collective existential dread, one way or another, with grave ramifications on the individual’s psyche.

And Zim Hip Hop’s OG's together with a plethora of new youthful entrants of the game personify such contradictions magnificently in their street-conscious raps. Excel at this hustlenomics game, the rappers seem to declare.

One doesn’t need sophisticated education to flourish in Zim, Sinbad insinuates. Only your grit, wit, and tenacity – survival of the fittest in the concrete jungle, he concludes, his bars gleaming with tenacious ferocity.

For those with propensities towards hustler-themed rap apologetics and polemics – gangsta-oriented rap – the song is an embodiment of paradise. It is your tailor-made package. The proverbial Gangstas’ Paradise.

If you are a willing victim of aligning with a fave rapper who reserves bars for inordinate periods, years even (Jnr Brown, of course); toiling patiently with burdensome crises of expectations since you voluntarily have Breezy (who releases music sparsely) as your favourite rapper; if you’re such a willing victim, then this song is for you.

Equally, for those unacquainted with the OG style of Sinbad, Jnr Brown, Fyah King, and I-Pro, the song may not be an exhilarating vocal and melodic journey as some Zim Hip Hop (and ZimDancehall, because of Fyah King) OG loyalists may portray it to be. Still, it is an accepted convention that art is notoriously subjective.

What we see, however, with crystal-clear clarity, is how the Dollasign head honcho expands his continuum of bhundu hustling/drip; and how he continues the disparaging remarks of haters when a gevha purchases material possessions such as cars and immovable property that signify arrival at urban individualistic wealth and recognition. As carried from his song Pray Fi Dem which we once covered here.

Conclusive Ratings

In Magevha Ayaya, the gritty, cold, hard, and bouncy street/hustler-themed sound exhibits an expected divergence from the artists’ first collab mentioned herein; yet, in light of such a refreshingly deviation, the rappers cleverly and tactfully remain rooted in their trademark lane of street-conscious, candid, slang-filled, and emphatically hard-hitting punchlines and metaphors on menacing instrumentals.

It is all about that affable simplicity and familiarity; effortless brilliance; and understated elegance – the “mastery of perfection” once alluded to in this piece.

LISTEN to/download Magevha Ayaya by Sinbad 90 ft. Jnr Brown [prod. by Fyah King and I-Pro) by clicking this Audiomack link here, and tell us what you think.