#TBT Throwback Track: 'Tuendelee' by Kleptomaniax, One of Kenya's Most Iconic Disstracks Was Not a Diss at All: Roba of Klepto
10 December 2015
It’s not been more than a decade since one of Kenya’s most iconic boy-bands, the Kleptomaniax, dropped they’re now famous dis-track ‘Tuendelee’.
And though the terms ‘going viral’ had not yet been coined back then, you could hear this track in the mouths of pretty much any music lovers back then, young and old alike.
At the time it was musical gold, the song which in my view made Klepto a crew to be reckoned with. In today’s world I would compare this track to Drake’s ‘Back to Back’, yes it was just that good, from the beat to the punch lines.
And the man who had stood out the most to me in this jam was Nyashinski. In musical terms, he brought the fire. You could tell he had a bone to grind and his punch lines were nothing less than sublime, and so was the delivery.
Sadly he was gone few years later after the band broke up and he’s never been heard from again in the music industry. But his work lives on.
Recently, Ghafla caught up with Roba, one of the members of Klepto, who in an interview made some very interesting revelations.
Back then it was public knowledge that, Chiwawa, another iconic rapper from way back when, had beef with Klepto. He even had a disstrack in which he clearly mentions the band and makes fan of their fans.
‘Tuendele’ which happened to come out right around the same time as this disstrack by Chiwawa, was therefore thought to be a response, and a good one at that.
However according to Roba, this now iconic track was not a disstrack at all, but it was just a matter of coincidence that Chiwawa’s disstrack also came out at the same time.
Roba says, if they went in an all-out beef, careers would’ve ended.
“I am grateful to the response it continues to receive to date. I believe most of our songs will remain classics. Our music is not just about the hype, it comes from the heart. Tuendelee was actually not intended to be a reply to any so called diss. It was in fact, recorded before the so called ‘diss euphoria.’ If we were to actually sit-in and do a well-planned diss, with insults like many of those disses had, careers would have ended. Kleptomaniax was not about that. That is not Hip Hop. Hip Hop is love. There are those moments in art where coincidences of the art to surrounding events just happen. It just came out at a time when there was pressure in the industry and the mood of the game at that time, was competitiveand the media being the media, of course ran with it.”
Well diss or not, it’s today’s throwback track, take a look;
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