Reinvention of Major Nemeye Khadija, king of comic music

 Major Nemeye Khadija, popularly known as Mejja has been a key player in many hits created by Kenyan artistes in the past one year. Featuring on musical styles as diverse as gengetone, rhumba and even coastal tunes, he has in the recent past worked with many artistes.

“Corona (Covid-19) made all of this possible. People have always been approaching me for collaborations but I was in a group and the decision had to sit well with all of us. To avoid friction, I would always advise any artiste who wanted a musical collaboration to work with Kansoul. This did not always happen,” he says.

When Madtraxx, a member of the group, had a baby and the lockdown was enforced, he decided to close the studio. Mejja got bored doing nothing. When he was approached for a collaboration by an artiste who had had issues with Madtraxx, he told Madtraxx about it and the producer told him to go ahead.

“There wasn’t a team that strategised that I would do these many songs with these artistes. It’s just that when you do something passionately, everything else just falls into place. It was the silver lining in the dark clouds of the pandemic,” says Mejja.

His revival has seen him work with new-age artistes who come up with creative ways of shooting and editing videos. None more so than when they were shooting Matata’s “Chini Chini”.

“The video was being shot in one loop. It didn’t matter whether we were finishing the scene and Ugali Man missed catching the ugali or the workers at the office strayed into the shot as they came back from lunch, we would have to start from the top. I failed to get the money inside my pocket a few times and the rest of the team would get upset. But it was amazing,” Mejja says of the experience.

The hit maker is disappointed that some celebrities and media personalities are pushing the Amapiano movement, which started in South Africa, while declaring gengetone dead.

Gengetone

“Some artistes may be happy seeing their compatriots fail, but I’m not like that. How can gengetone be dead when I’m getting calls from Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda to hook them up with the (gengetone) producers? Not all gengetone is vulgar; this is simply art.”

Mejja grew up in Majengo, Nyeri County, which is similar to Majengo in Nairobi and Mombasa: the estates inhabited by Muslims with Kiswahili being the predominant language.

“Islam is a religion and way of life. That is also how I got the stories that I talk about in my songs. It was strange coming from the hood (Majengo) and heading into Nyeri town to find that everyone was speaking Kikuyu. My mum has never addressed me in Kikuyu,” says Mejja.

Mejja’s influence in his humorous storytelling rap style came from Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP album, which was given to him by a friend.

“I remember his song ‘Guilty Conscience’ was crazy because he was having a fight between his good and bad sides in different situations. I was also mesmerised by Sheek Louch’s ‘How I Love You’, where he uses a woman as an extended metaphor while trying to explain his love for hip hop.

“They made me start thinking about doing rap with more than just one interpretation and including storylines. I worked on perfecting it in a way people here could vibe with it,” he says. Mejja’s dream then was to hear himself on a CD, to know how he sounds like when he’s rapping.

But his imagination has always been active. Once, when things got really hard, he and his mother had to move to Nanyuki. On the 45-minute ride in a matatu, he would imagine his mother as his manager, and some passengers who had fallen asleep as his dancers and deejay.

Even without experience, Mejja could already envision how his music videos would appear.

Comedy

“I didn’t want my videos to be too serious, I love comedy. I catch myself laughing as I write lyrics because I’m already picturing how that scene will be in the video. I am involved in all aspects of my video productions. Before shooting a video, I listen to a song countless times, then write down how each scene will be like, locations and lenses. Comedy is also about camera works and not just what someone says,” he says.

Mejja has grown over the years through different phases. It was Clemo, his producer at Calif Records, who told him to make his rap a lot less hardcore and underground, and more commercialised. Choruses were the hardest things to master. Eventually, he landed on the chanted choruses.

“Everything I am right now is due to that time I was in the studio with Jua Cali when he had a stranglehold on the industry. He was a really humble guy and would accompany us to eat Sh40 chips at a place called Msoro. I learned from him that it doesn’t matter how big of a name you are, we’re all equal as human beings,” says Mejja.

For a long time, Mejja’s lyrics had been deep, but he also wanted to just have good-time songs. Kansoul gave him the opportunity to do this without having to think about how fans would perceive him since he wasn’t Mejja the solo artiste.

Serious relationship

His writing process is also different now. Initially, he would write down lyrics. Nowadays, he sits down to record a track that has inspired him. He listens to it repeatedly for a week as he continues with his normal schedules. All the while, he’s coming up with lines. After coming up with a verse, he starts working on the entire song.

He says you can sing “Jana Kuliendaje” along hip hop duo MOP’s “Ante Up” track, his inspiration, from start to finish.

In that sense, he says he never forgets a song he’s ever written.

“If you ask for a certain line from a song, I may not remember. But if you give me a mic and the beat, it just comes back to me.”

Mejja has been separated from his wife since December and he says he is focusing on himself.

“You do need time to heal. Before, there'd be a woman on WhatsApp whom I would be chatting with, making me smile or had a female friend I’d vibe on the phone with. This is the very first time I’m trying something like this, where I’ve isolated myself from the person that I was in a serious relationship, not trying to find out how she’s doing and not talking to any other woman too. It’s amazing. I’m focusing on things that make me happy. Somebody said that (in such situations) it’s important to be able to get to a place where you can go on a road trip by yourself,” he says, adding that he loves taking long drives in nature.

Mejja wants to be a testimony to youth from anywhere that anything is possible and that they shouldn’t fall prey to social media and try to be popular.

“I’ve been taken for lunch by ‘kingpins’ to change my approach and post flashy photos. Right now 90 per cent of illnesses are lifestyle diseases and stress. Once people understand you, they will rock with you. Everyone has their path and timing. Quoting Sizzla, ‘Simplicity I use to survive’,” he concludes.