from Hype Magazine

The most fun any Zambian MC can have is listening to their track on local radio. Although playlists on Zambian airwaves are loyal to Billboard 100, the emergence of MCs mixtaping and myspacing their way into the Zambian music industry has had even skeptics nodding along.

Zed hip hop is finally flirting with its fate as the genre gets set to propel the country onto the world musical stage. Full time MCs like Conscious, C4, Slap D, Kryptic, Dope Ghetto, Dead Poets, LV, Holstar and Al Kani live the culture and feed off it in the same way it feeds their gritty rhymes about absent fathers and suburban struggles.

The clean-cut image of Zed MCs has paved the way or more airplay on shows like Planet Zed, a Saturday mid-morning show on Hot FM presented by Honey. After more than a year of hip hop on her show, listeners have warmed up to a female DJ spinning heavy hip hop beats in the morning. “Most rappers got t the skill and a lot of potential but lack financial support to do serious projects for them to get distribution deals, “ says Drex, who presents Hip Hop To Rock Yo Block, a Thursday evening show on college station Hone FM. Drex insists that Zed hip hop headz are still groping for credibility in the industry.

“Just because I haven’t been shot doesn’tmean I don’t have credibility,” counters Kryptic, whose album The 9th Letter: Definition of Self is due in 2008. “But, you know, I could arrange it if it gets me more airplay,” he laughs. One album is likely to change the Zed hip hop landscape is Conscious’ A.S.H. Risen (A Soldier Has Risen) to be released on the Escape Committee label later this year. Having listened to more than half of the tracks on the project, it’s sure to be the hip hop album of the year. “Peeps that introduced hip hop to Zed were form middle-class families that had been to the USA. People in the ghetto haven’t accepted it because it came from the ‘burbs and seemed to look down on people,” he states.

A rapper that’s breaking barriers using hip hop is Slap D, whose album, So Che on the Digital X label is due at this month. The obscenely gifted MC rhymes in vernac and has a legion of followers with his delivery on subjects such as falling in love with a prostitute to what would happen if Zambia were a perfect nation.

Saturated by the standard leg-opening grooves from Zambian crooners, Zed hip-hop is breathing new life into the music industry. Most radio and club DJs may be sausage fingered on the knobs when it comes to Zed hip hop, but the movement in Zambia cannot be stopped. Not when it’s the voice of the generation. Albums to look out for this year include Inferno’s DiaryChapterOne, The Holstar’s H3 Love Me or Hate Me, Conscious’ A.S.H. Risen and Takondwa O.N.E.: Only NiggersEnvy.