Kenyan producer Jinku, the alter-ego of Jacob Solomon, is part of the Santuri Safari collective, a East African project whose goal is to forge a space for rising artists and producers within the region by bridging the gap between its heritage and electronic dance music. For his new single "Fee Fie Foe Fum" premiering below, Jinku teams up with Kenyan rapper Checkmate Mido to create a charged-up track to let the rest of the world know: Yeah, East Africa can go hard.
"The song was a way for Checkmate and I to let people know we are here and we mean business," Jinku told The FADER over email. "Its genre is Swahili bass, which fuses the 808s of trap, the stab synths of future bass, the frenetic percussion of Afro-house, and song arrangement of Moombahton, whilst incorporating some East African instruments and native languages."
Over Jinku's aggressive beat, Checkmate Mido's braggadocio manifests itself in the form of onomatopoeic rat tat tat tat gun sounds, record scratches, and viciously rolled Rs. "The beat to me felt like an animal or beast wanted to be let out of a cage," Checkmate Mido explained. "I freestyled some rhymes to it, and we both gravitated to the line fee fie foe fum, I smell the blood of a rapper so we decided to build on that and conceptualize the song around that hook." Jinku will release "Fee Fie Foe Fum" on his forthcoming Amadeyo mixtape.
