- Title: Eight-year-old rapper strikes chord in Uganda with songs about poverty
- Date: 7th February 2020
- Summary: ***WARNING CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** VARIOUS OF AGGREY AKENA, FRESH KID'S PRODUCER TALKING TO JOURNALIST WRITING ON WALL READING (English): 'BADMAN' (SOUNDBITE) (English) FRESH KID'S PRODUCER, AGGREY AKENA, TALKING TO JOURNALIST, SAYING: "Fresh Kid is actually very fast at picking remixes and picking up our content. Because one, sometimes it can take like, some artists
- Embargoed: 21st February 2020 11:03
- Keywords: "Fresh Kid" rapper Patrick Ssenyonjo Uganda rapper
- Location: KAMPALA AND UNKNOWN LOCATIONS, UGANDA
- City: KAMPALA AND UNKNOWN LOCATIONS, UGANDA
- Country: Uganda
- Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment,Music
- Reuters ID: LVA007BZM6EE1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Ugandan rapper "Fresh Kid" has racked up hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube, won a U.S. award for his song "Bambi" and emerged victorious from a tussle with the government - all before his eighth birthday.
The rapper, real name Patrick Ssenyonjo, is a household name in Uganda for his songs about his parents' struggles to provide for him and the poverty in his village.
"Don't send me back to the village where there's no help, I remember a time when money was scarce, Getting fees and food was so difficult," he sings in his hit single "Bambi," which means "Please" in the Luganda language and has had more than 200,000 views on YouTube.
"Life in the village is not easy. Sometimes you achieve what you desire and other times you do not, sometimes it's a happy life and other times it's not. For me, it was not the best life so I decided to sing so as to achieve what I desire," said Fresh Kid.
Uganda's 40 million people have been ruled by 75-year-old President Yoweri Museveni for 34 years, although Bobi Wine, a popular Ugandan pop star turned leading opposition lawmaker, plans to challenge Museveni at the next year's elections by promising to kickstart the stagnant economy.
Four out of ten young Ugandans are unemployed, the finance ministry says, and 80% of those working are in low-paying informal jobs.
Paul Mutabaazi, an illiterate, itinerant 40-year-old manicurist with five children used to be among them. Then he started nurturing the talent of his son Fresh Kid, whose talent began turning heads at age five.
"Whenever he heard a song playing, he would run to the radio and listen to it to the end, immediately memorize it and start singing it. He masters a song on the day of its release. During the day, you would see him dancing and singing a lot to different songs. He started singing a lot and for different groups of traders in the community, he would get cash rewards and bring it to me telling me how he made it," Mutabaazi told Reuters.
The boy began singing for their neighbours in Luwero, a poor coffee-growing district about 60 kilometres north of Uganda's capital Kampala. One day a singer he idolized, Fik Fameica, held a show near their home. Fresh Kid asked to perform as a curtain raiser.
His performance won him 500,000 shillings ($136.24) - a month's salary for a teacher. Mutabaazi approached a talent spotter who started booking performances and producing Fresh Kid's songs.
Ironically, the boy's career received its biggest boost when the minister for children's affairs sought to bar him from singing nearly a year ago under laws prohibiting child labour.
The spat generated national headlines. Ugandans slammed the minister for blocking the rapper's rise amid sky-high unemployment.
That's when Fresh Kid wrote "Bambi," his plea to be allowed to sing. It became his biggest hit, ubiquitous on the radio and in bars, and won the Best International Video from the U.S.-based Carolina Music Video Awards.
"Music has helped me a lot. I have earned some money from music, It has given me an admirable life, I have also made friends and it has gotten me to a good school and I am supporting my family," he told Reuters.
Eventually his parents, his manager and the government worked out a deal.
Now Fresh Kid is leaving behind the poverty he sings about. An elite school offered him a full bursary; he came first in his class. He's got an apartment where he lives with his father, who has opened a beauty salon.
Outside Bad Man Records studio on Kampala's outskirts, the young rapper is another child playing with his friends, albeit with an NBA-branded silver chain dangling over his purple track suit.
But inside the studio, he is all focus. He can record a song in under an hour with barely any rehearsing, his producers say.
"Fresh Kid is actually very fast at picking remixes and picking up our content. Because one, sometimes it can take like, some artists it takes them like so many weeks to get the songs. You need to first do them a demo, they get the song then record but for Fresh [Kid] it's kind of different because the lyrics are written instantly and is recording instantly and like of you must say, probably maybe like, less than 40 minutes" said Aggrey Akena, one of his producers.
"His vocals are very amazing, it's like there's a bunch of grownups inside Fresh Kid," added Akena.
(Francis Mukasa, Lisa Ntungicimpaye, Donna Omulo) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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