Zenji flava

Zenji Flava is a common nickname for Zanzibari hip hop, a genre that began to develop in the 1990s. Cool Para said to be the first rapper to pioneer Zenji Flava during the 90s. He was using Saleh Jabri's tape to rap on some local shows in Zanzibar until 1996 when he teamed-up with another rapper named Cool Muza together with others they formed a rap group called "Struggling Islanders. They made their debut single "Historia" in early 1997. Though the group short-lived and Cool Para and Muza both went to pursue a solo career. Cool Para was the first rapper in Zanzibar and Tanzania mainland to make rap and taarab fusion called taarap. With it he went to record a song with the most prominent taarab music band widely known as the East African Melody Modern Taarab, the song was known as "Loo Umezoea" which was released early 2000. He also did "Kwenye Mataa" with the same taarab band in 1998. Before Cool Para, there was also another short-lived crew named Contish. The group consisted with two members Abdul and Hakim. They released their only album called "Mabishoo" (93). The album was available all over Zanzibar and Tanzania. They were using Swahili lyrics over ragga instrumentals such as 'Tingaling' by Shabba Ranks.^[1] Sam,e style as Saleh J. Sometimes later they disbanded and Kim went on pursue a solo and released an album called Kim Pekee. Abdul went to live abroad. The name is made of zenji, which is slang for "Zanzibar", and flava, which is a corruption of "flavour", thus meaning "of Zanzibari taste". As with bongo flava, i.e., Tanzanian mainland's hip hop, zenji flava is usually sung in swahili; the main difference between the two subgenres is that Zanzibari hip hop also reflects some influence of taarab, and thus indirectly of Arab music and Indian music. Notable zenji flava artists include Ali Haji.^[2] As Zenji flavour goes on it find itself as a sub part of Bongo flava as it has influence from the young generation of artists who want to cop with Bongo flava. like Offside trick, 2 berry now is separated to form two solo artists（Berry black and Berry white）, Wazenji kijiwe and Shaka zulu, others are East connection which was made up with almost seven groups of artist including Offside trick Brooklyn, Four nature, Jumbo camp, Queen love, and K jam. It was in this time that Zenji flava was modernized with rapid growth in the number of artists.

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