Dumi RIGHT, first known for being half of the early nineties rap duo Zimbabwe Legit and more recently active with his group OUO, is about to drop his solo album ‘Connect the dots’ this spring. The first single ‘Are you ready for this’, produced by Young Cee, was launched a few days ago. The video was shot in Washington (USA) and Harare (Zimbabwe).
Dumi explains to us about the process of recording the song and video: “The whole way the track came about is crazy. I met Outspoken at a party that Magee (Nomadic Wax, ed.) was hosting at his crib in the US some years back. It was a classic moment because he was there with his crew and band; Wageble from Senegal was there as well as Omar from Syria and so I walked in to an international cipher in progress. We all vibed and freestyled for close to an hour before actually being introduced formally to each other.
Fast forward to when I began work on my solo album, I really wanted to get Outspoken on a track. He was back in Zimbabwe and so we exchanged thoughts and I told him the concept and hook over email and sent him the beat, etc. I actually wrote 2 hooks, the one on the track and a different one. When I heard what he did with this one, “Somebody, anybody are you ready for this…” it was a lock. Anyway he laced his fiery verse and sent over the audio files and a ref and all that.
Then I got my homeboy MC Pep (from O.U.O) on it. Heads might not know but Pep is the Original Zimbabwe Hip Hop pioneer and one of the first people I ever heard rap on national radio in Zimbabwe. He actually brought me onto the scene and I wrote my first actual song with him at his crib back in the day. So once all the verses were laced I sent it to the super engineer St Mic to EQ and mix. Oh yeah, Young Cee from Connecticut did the sick track we rocked over.
Ok so back to the video, Magee from Nomadic Wax was in Harare doing some documentary work and he took the opportunity to shoot some scenes with Outspoken and his crew for the video. The thought at that time was that Outspoken would film his scenes in Zim and we’d film ours in the US and then combine the footage since Magee was going to shoot it all. As fate would have it, Outspoken ended up coming to the US for some workshops and we all linked up to shoot the rest of the video together. With the skills and talents that Magee has on the visuals and editing he was able to weave it all together seamlessly”.