A number of Rwandan artistes have adopted the trend of collaborating with international artists as a manner to promote their music.
On July 17, Rwandan R&B maestro Meddy, born Médard Jobert Ngabo, dropped his latest track, “Downtown, ” featuring Burundian artist Thierry Nish. The video of the song has produced 274,635 opinions on YouTube in just one week.
The sultry video was created and directed by US- based record producer Lick Lick Lick. The track’s lyrics are in both Kinyarwanda and English.
Like many of his songs, “Downtown ” is also a love song in which the two artists attempt to convince a beautiful girl by asking her to go downtown for a crazy night out.
In the same behavior, the Rwandan female music duo, Charly na Nina, lastly published the song they did with Nigerian dancehall singer Orezi, Delta State’s true name Allen Esegine.
Known for their banging sessions with various artists such as Geo Steady, Bebe Cool, they have now moved all the way to West Africa where they recorded the single “Lazizi.”
The song is three minutes and 27 seconds long, and the sound was created by Narrow Road Records ‘ Rwandan producer Pastor P. It was also dropped a few verses in Kinyarwanda in Kinyarwanda and Orezi, although mostly used pidgin.
According to Nina, the song is not as new as many think. “It’s a collaboration that we did a few years ago but didn’t get a chance to shoot the video,” she told journalists. The single had its video premiered on Wednesday July 24.
“It’s such an exciting experience to work with Orezi, as he is such a big name in Nigeria, and we wanted to work on this project for some time and it has finally come to life,” Nina told journalists in an interview on Thursday, adding; “There are more collaborations with foreign artistes coming in the future, as it is our time to push harder music barriers, and do as many collabos from outside Rwanda.”
She said the video was filmed on Swangz Avenue in Uganda and had 15,639 opinions on YouTube as of Thursday morning.