Things they do for the alomo eh

Rap is all about your bonafides. The very history of rap abhors the vacuum of a rapper without any kind of history or pedigree and since the 70’s rappers have made a statement of repping their ‘hoods’, shouting out their ‘cliques’ and ‘gangs’ and featured or bragged about their mentors. Even Nigerian rap isn’t immune to the phenomenon of Rap bonafides, it actually has spread into most of Nigeria’s musical genres with rappers like Olamide claiming Surulere and Bariga’s agberos as his family, Phyno repping Enugu, M.I and Jesse Jagz putting Jos on the map, Terry Da Rap Man repping Kaduna and Wizkid bringing Ojuelegba to the world.

Every contemporary rapper has to fight the temptation to provide their bonafides but most fail, and few have been as ingenious as Abuja based rapper and producer Kuraye asserting his street cred without losing his originality. Kuraye takes the route of the populist by making an homage not to a specific hood but the preferred beverage of all hoods, traditional herb infused alcohol, Alomo. 

Alomo Bitters, originally from Ghana (like a lot of the contemporary facets of our lives that scale) has become synonymous with traditionally made herbal drinks preferred by the ‘hoods’, and comes with it’s own street cred Kuraye featuring singer XL Spliff and extra production credits from DaReKasali, asserts this over a trap beat, asserting his street cred over and over and his allegiance to all hoods. It is an interesting bop, bound to get more than a few replays.

Listen to “Alomo” here.

Listen to Aylo and Aziff talk wasted love and revealing emotions on “Still”