Stamina sparkling Bongo Hiphop with 'Love Bite'

Afro beats and Afro pop artistes have been overshadowing Hip Hop artistes, especially in digital platforms somehow forcing the genre to creativity to stay afloat.

On a Saturday, June 18, this year the heavyweight rapper Boniventure Kabogo alias Stamina unveiled his ‘Love bite’ series at one of Mlimani City’s Kukukuku.

It was the first of its kind, a new thing for a Bongo Hip Hop artiste to host a listening party. A number of fellow artistes and music fans graced the event including Nay Wa Mitego, Young Killer, Q Chilla, Banana Zoro and the vibrant up and coming artiste Saraphina among others.

Speaking with The Beat, Stamina revealed that ‘Paradiso’, his second album’s success, led to ‘Love Bite’ series.

Paradiso coupled over 6 million streams on Boomplay since its launch late last year.

Stamina introduced the ‘Love bite’ series to Bongo flava industry that tells the stories of many youths in society.

“What I want to say is that the ‘Love Bite’ package is all about creativity and storytelling that I have seen in the streets. Let’s take a simple look at what happens most of the time,” says Stamina

Each episode entails three narrative of love, life and relationships, with a distinct rhymes, rhythm and message.

‘Future Wife’ opens the series, in it, Stamina is looking to be in a relationship…talks about what he would do, experience and offer the lucky woman.

Featuring Mkwawa, in the end, it shows a good Samaritan neighbor brought a girl for him.

‘Ukizaliwa’ Swahili for after you are born, is the second song inside the Love Bite series dedicated to an unborn child.

Inside ‘Ukizaliwa’, Stamina gives his unborn child, whether a girl or a boy, all pieces of life advice but starts with how scared and unsure he was about becoming a father.

Baba hit marker picked Bongo Flava legend Banana Zorro, a perfect callabo, fans say.

Lastly is, ‘Hayana Maana’ Swahili for they are nonsense, expressing how disappointing love and relationships can sometimes turn out to be.

“First, a person starts a relationship, second the relationship is blessed with a pregnant person and later the relationship ends because there is no true love,” Stamina narrates.

The first time I heard about the ‘Love Bite’ it reminded me of the 133 minutes ‘Trapped in the closet’ project from R. Kelly, which was released back in 2005 to 2012 consisting of 33 episodes.

In 2015, Stamina released his first ever album called ‘Mount Uluguru,’ consisting of 20 hits that among them is “Kabwela” that gave him the respect in the industry of Bongo flava.

All three videos were on the trends section on global video stream platform, YouTube.

“I was so amazed on how fans responded, frankly speaking I didn’t expect to reach those numbers and be able to be among top 10 on trend for weeks,” he says.

The Asiwaze-rapper says the plan was to make the whole of ‘Paradiso’ into series but because of number of songs and its duration he came up with Love Bite instead.

“Paradiso is one of my best albums so far. So, I was expected to have the series on the album. As you know, albums have almost 13 songs and imagine each song has the series. That would have taken more time, probably years to prepare and record visuals,” explains Stamina.

So far, 2022 will be one of Stamina’s years all thanks to the Paradiso album. He’s going to launch the music video production before the end of this year and introduce his new artistes from his ‘Paradise’ studio.

“This year, with more concerts, in and outside the continent, Hip Hop is sparkling,”

Stamina promises three more videos to come in the very near future plus another Rostam song, “which my fans are waiting to hear ,” he narrates.