The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu
OVER the last few years, Jah Prayzah has had the ability to raise his hand up when he is needed the most.
A lot has been said about his ability to dish out hit after hit but not enough time has been devoted to his impeccable timing.
Cooking up a hit is one thing and knowing when to release one is another. Over the last few years Jah Prayzah has proved that perhaps his hit-making skills are not a fluke, as he has managed to release hits whenever he has felt like it.
As the festive season approaches, the time seems ripe for another Jah Prayzah smash and grab. In the same week that the country’s finest minds in the worlds of commerce and finance set out strategies aimed at rejuvenating the country’s economy, it seems like a music industry desperately in need of festive season hits was given fair warning that the annual Jah Prayzah stimulus package was on the way.
During a listening session in the capital this week, it emerged that Jah promised that a follow up to last year’s Kutongwa Kwaro would arrive on 2 November.
The album, Chitubu, has a lot to live up to, as it comes in the wake of last year’s Kutongwa Kwaro, an album that put to bed any discussions about who was the biggest artiste in the country.
Packed with hits to cater for his very diverse following, Kutonga Kwaro solidified Jah Prayzah’s superstardom while once again enhancing his reputation as a political soothsayer, with many adopting the opinion that the album’s title track predicted the political changes that were about to sweep through the country.
No doubt many will be looking to see if he continues the streak on the latest album, as they take a microscope to his lyrics to see what he might have foreseen this time.
For the less politically inclined however, a Jah Prayzah album in November simply means the good times are once again about to roll. After all, what is a festive season without a few Jah Prayzah hits?
This year seems particularly primed for a Jah Prayzah takeover, with most of his competitors having dropped their albums earlier on in the year. The festive season is where the money is, and he prepares for the roll-out of another summer blockbuster some might be wondering whether Jah Prayzah has mastered the formula necessary for success in a tough industry.
“It’s not really a strategy on our part,” the star’s manager Keen Mushapaidze told Sunday Life. “We just make sure that he releases an album every year. It’s mostly coincidental that the album releases happen at the end of the year.”
As evidence that Jah was not always looking for a big festive season payoff when he released his albums, Mushapaidze highlighted the fact that the Kutongwa Kwaro hit-maker had released albums earlier in the year in the past.
“If you notice our albums from three or four years back we were releasing them earlier in the year. We released one album in March if I’m not mistaken. So anyone saying this is a strategy is just reading too much into things,” he said.
