What makes a great rap group? Is it chemistry? Personalities? The body of work? All the essential ingredients have to be in place, of course. It also helps if the sum of the group is greater than its individual parts.
The best rap groups come in various shades and sizes. In Uganda, Baboon Forest Entertainment set the bar high for rap crews. BFE proved that three really is the magic number(GNL, Mun G & Big Tril). And groups like Klear Kut and Bataka Squad showed that Ug Hip-hop has the power to bridge cultural gaps.
In the USA, we’ve come to love crews like the Wu Tang Clan, N.W.A. and Public Enemy because they changed the landscape of hip-hop with their activism. We cherish OutKast and The Roots because they somehow pinched our hard-wiring and resonated with our humanity.
In Uganda, Clansmen UG started out as a rap group with four members; Najib alias ‘jibo’ , Joel Kisalu alias ‘KSL Owakabi’, Benezeri Chibita, and kagyezi whom many know as ‘Ch!ef.
According to KSL, the idea of forming the group came about when the three were performing alongside Benezeri during his university tour in 2016.
“Benezeri was the common factor that led to the three of us meeting for the first time.We shared ideas ans one of them was being the formation of our group which was to be called Clansmen”, KSL says.
KSL continues to say that Elevation Jokwiz klean is a witness to the formation of their group and that he endorsed its formation.
After the group’s formation, they immediately released a few tracks that included “Beat Murderer”, “Mukiga Wamaani” and “Onjagazaki” which they shot a video for and that is the only video where all of the four members were in, including Jokwiz who was the number one Clansmen fan.
“Mukiga Wamani” opened msny doors for them as it was the one song that had the most airplay and got the group noticed.
“We talked about a Clansmen album and even started to work on other tracks, and unfortunately that’s when Benezeri decided to leave the group. We tried to convince him to stay but in vein”, KSL continues to narrate to us their journey.
KSL says that Benezeri by that time had alreay made up his mind(of leaving the group) and that the other member Jibo also got busy with a full time job that made recording songs in studios and linking up for further group committments becoming very difficult and the third member Ch!ef was also doing his post graduate.
Ch!ef and KSL remained the only members of the group and they managed to record a single which got massive airplay and somehow kept now the duo relevant.
“We released individual songs to push our brands and as for the duo, we had an idea of making an Album which also became very difficult because I had to go back to my aviation studies in Nairobi”, KSL says.
Before KSL leaving for Nairobi, they had managed to record a few songs for their debut forthcoming album that was to be titled “Underrated” and in 2021, they released two tracks off that album that featured rappers Nellysade and Akeine thanks to Ledra who did the production for the whole album.
In 2022 around December, the album finally got done and even though it took them a while to release it, when you listen to it, trust me it was worth the wait.
The album with features from Wonder JR, St. Nelly Sade, Jeminz, Akeine, Lyrical G, Adrenalyn Muzik and The Homie.
