^{X Plastaz. Maasai Hip Hop
(Outhere Records, 2004) /
Album artwork, detail.}

Brain Flavour                                 A lyric history  
Richard Prins                              of Swahili Hip-Hop

Tenement Press / No University Press #3
978-1-917304-15-3
350pp [Approx.]

£25.00

 _{PREORDER DIRECT FROM TENEMENT HERE} 


Publishing 29th May 2026



A road movie of a run through Tanzanian rap
in the second person, a riff on the possible
punctum(s) of 21st-century East African
popular song, a telefoto lens on a local music
industry, an exploded documentary study of
a cultural anadiplosis, a love letter to the artists
and musicians of Swahili Hip-Hop on the brink
of our millennium and beyond.

Different species of plants have different types of root systems. Some have a large taproot, which plunges deep into the soil. This is ideal for absorbing nutrients, but not for adapting to changes, and it makes transplantation notoriously difficult. Others have adventitious root systems which can form out of nonroot tissue such as stems and shoots—enabling the plant to respond to stress, or thrive in new environments. Hip-hop has an adventitious root structure.

Countless countries across every populated continent have developed their own dynamic, homegrown hip-hop scenes, often as an expression of the stressful conditions of modern urban life. It is one of the most globally popular art forms ever exported by America, and perhaps nowhere else has it made a greater impact on language, culture, and community than it has in Tanzania. Much of the slang employed in Tanzania either originated from American hip-hop or was transmitted through Swahili hip-hop. Multiple pioneering Swahili hip-hop artists have leveraged their influence to gain seats in Tanzania's parliament, and Swahili hip-hop also gave birth to the adjacent Bongo Flava genre, the most popular music of 21st-century East Africa, raising up international stars like Diamond Platnumz (the first artist in sub-Saharan Africa to record two billion views on YouTube).




^{Left—The Author’s own personal copy
of Funga Kazi on cassette.
(Back, Left to Right: Fanani, Willy /
Front: Professor Jay.)
Right—Kwanza Unit, circa 1994.
(Left to Right: KBC, D Rob, Fresh-G,
Y-Thang, Eazy B, Chief Rhymson.)}


This is, perhaps, an unlikely story. Imports of foreign cultural items were restricted during Tanzania's socialist period, so very few Tanzanians even knew hip-hop existed until the 1990s, during a devastating period of economic liberalisation. But Tanzania's culture still retained the idealistic and humanistic values of the Ujamaa period, an experiment in agrarian socialism spearheaded by Julius Nyerere, the nation's stubborn and visionary first president. Where American rappers represented the oppressed underclass of a racially divided society, Ujamaa had resolved many of Tanzania's tribal divisions, creating arguably the most politically amiable society in sub-Saharan Africa. Where American rappers had to function in a cutthroat, capitalist music industry that was well-versed in converting racist assumptions into obscene amounts of cash, the Tanzanian government during Ujamaa had subsidised big bands and promoted community-oriented lyrics. American rappers were pressured to abandon hip-hop's social principles in favour of the stereotypes that would make their music more marketable to white teenagers in the suburbs. Swahili rappers felt a different pressure; they sought to prove their music's social value to their elders, because that was how the prior generation of musicians had found success.

The first Swahili rap song ever recorded was a remix of Vanilla Ice’s one-hit-wonder ‘Ice Ice Baby.’ (That probably sounds absurd, but let us remember that ‘Ice Ice Baby’ sampled ‘Under Pressure,’ which was itself composed by Zanzibar native Farrokh Bolsara, better known by his stage name, Freddie Mercury.) The genesis of Swahili hip-hop is actually an uncanny homecoming, and Brain Flavour: A Lyric History of Swahili Hip-Hop tells a fragmented and provisional version of that homecoming and the dynamic body of work that followed. [†]

My involvement in Tanzania's hip-hop scene began in 2007, when I received an impromptu invitation to perform on stage with the popular singer Ferooz Mrisho. I later worked for a Dar es Salaam-based entertainment company that organised hip-hop festivals, as well as summits for musicians and industry stakeholders. I have published several personal essays that touch on these experiences [see Prins’ ‘Down and Up in Dar es Salaam,’ as published in Witness and, thereafter, listed as “Notable” [The Best American Travel Writing 2020]. But these essays were never more than tangential to the music itself; they did not examine its sound, its meaning, or its history. While I recognised that as a shortcoming, I also recognised that the genre of Swahili hip-hop would not be done justice by a simple personal essay. If I wanted to write about it meaningfully, that would require a much larger undertaking.

For the last few years, I have devoted most of my creative efforts to translating Swahili literature—classical poetry, and an Africanfuturist novel—and, when I showed fellow translators my translations of Swahili hip-hop lyrics, they politely suggested that the static page might not provide sufficient context for readers to appreciate translated lyrics as literary objects. One colleague imagined pairing the translations with interviews of the lyricists.

Indeed, it was after interviewing Sloter of the rap group L.W.P. Majitu that I finally envisioned how I might write about Swahili hip-hop. His experience in the genre's early years helped me see how Tanzanian rappers were translating American hip-hop into a Swahili cultural context. Although they idolised and consciously emulated American artists such as Tupac Shakur and members of the Wu-Tang Clan, their country’s unique postcolonial political history placed them in a social ecosystem that was in many ways the polar opposite of their American counterparts. During the summer of 2024, I was fortunate enough to conduct in-person interviews with over thirty pioneering Swahili rappers and producers, a body of oral history that animates this book and seeks to honor the oral art form that inspired it.



^{Left—Saleh J, King of Swahili Rap (Perullo, 2007) /
Album artwork, detail.
Right—Boni Luv at Mawingu Studio, early 1990s.}


While I approach the cultural history of Swahili hip-hop from the wider angle of Tanzania’s political history, I also approach it through the telefoto lens of my own experience in the local music industry, including Plimptonesque vignettes portraying my often hapless attempts to make my mark as a recording artist in Tanzania. Braiding cultural studies, political history, and participatory memoir approaches this complex topic in the spirit of hybridity and juxtaposition, some of the first ingredients that make this a “lyric” history.

So what is a lyric history? This project  does present a sample of translated rap songs that strive to make the lyrics hit the page as dynamically as they do the eardrums. However, it is not a history of lyrics, but rather a lyric history in the ontological sense of a lyric essay, described by Lia Purpura as providing “provisional responses” rather than certitude. As a white North American writing about Tanzanian artists, I believe it is necessary to resist the notion that my voice, opinions or overview, can possibly be definitive. There are several formal approaches I employ to this end. I undermine the authority of my own first-person voice by rendering it a second-person voice (this is also meant to help situate the reader in an unfamiliar setting). I privilege associative rather than linear logic. And I invoke translation as an organising mechanism, often using Swahili words and attempted or approximate translations as a link between sections—a prosey spin on the poetic device of anadiplosis.



Prins                                                                               2025

Left—Zavara Mponjika
aka. Chief Rhymson,
circa 2022.  
Right—Kwanza Unit, Kwanzanians
(Madunia Foundation, 2000).

Big Dog Posse, Left to Right, 
Drez Chief, Issa Chronic, and Kompyuta.