II Proud

WOMEX, Stockholm, 1998

Well, its Halloween 1998 and I'm sitting on the stairwell at WOMEX and I don't know...I've just run into you on the stairwell and I don't know what your name.
My name is Joseph Mbilinyi, I am II Proud from Tanzania.
What do you do and what are you doing here?
I am invited in this WOMEX festival to come and represent my country and I represent in rap music, in African rap music. I do it in Kiswahili and I put some African flavors in it. I mean in the instrumentation and stuff like that.
Now how did you pick up doing rap music?
From radios, from tapes, from CDs and from every part of media. You have...you know I was influenced, like this was back 8 years ago, when I was in school, I was allowed to listen to rap music and I had some groups I was allowed to listen, like American groups,
Like Who?
Like NWA, Niggers With Attitude, men like Ice Cube, --, MC-- and others who were in a group, I also listen to--, I listen to different stuff from America and I got influenced by them. <sorry I just cant understand what he's saying, likely Tupak Shakur>
Were the people that you knew also listening to the same kind of music, American music?
You mean people in my country?
Your friends?
Yeh, we had a group before I became solo, before I came solo we had a group of three people and we have many people doing rap music in my country, the hip-hop scene is very big in my country.
Really!
Yeh, very big, you cannot even believe.
So what do you take from your country and put into rap?
Well, first of all language, I use my mother tongue.
Can you demostrate for me right now, can you give me a verse?
In very short, I come in like this, what can give you? Freestyle stuff? No. I gonna give you and I come in like this, <swahili verses>...
It sounds like ghetto and Soweto.
Yeh.
Now what do you have in the back, do you have African instruments in the back?
Yeh, that's my next mission cause you know like we started...I started doing full American music, then I came by dropping the language English and I used my own language, meanwhile using some American-European flavors, so next mission is ...so next project is dropping everything from outside Africa and coming up with real African hip-hop.
Wow. Now when you make albums do you have recording studios, have you made recordings?
Yeh, I have made like 3 albums.
Do they make mostly tapes there...cassettes... or do they sell CDs?
In tapes, yeh, we don't have CD production, the production is very behind, you know.
Do you go into a studio to do it?
Yeh, in a small studio, we have 8 track studios, we have <laugh> older machines in the studio.
So most people just have tape players then, right?
Yeh, they've got CD players but the problem is that we don't have facilities to produce CDs. We have to be out of there to produce CDs and that's why I'm here now trying everything to come up with something international for people to listen all over the world.
So you want to be...well you wouldnt be here if you weren't interested in being international. Do you want to tour around Europe.
Yeh, you know that's my ambition, you know MC's my ambition. I like to be everywhere, you know, I like to be everywhere. But whereever I go I would like to be recognized as Tanzanian rapper coming up with Tanzanian rap.full of African styles in there.

MUSICA