The Monkey Nuts & Hope Masike To Launch Album With Top UK Hip Hop Label

Zimbabwe’s leading alternative hip hop group, the Monkey Nuts, have signed a ground-breaking record deal with UK based record label BBE Music.

They will be launching their album Boom-Bap Idiophonicsthat will feature prominent French producer DJ Oiland Hope Masike on the 27^th of April 2015. The record deal is a coup by the Monkey Nuts as BBE have major UK and US hip hop players signed to their label such as iconic group, the Pharcyde, and the late J Dilla.

BBE Music says “Boom-Bap Idiophonics is an intermingling of culture and sound, spaced out across two continents by DJ Oil, The Monkey Nuts and Hope Masike”. The album was recorded by the artists during the Harare International Festival of the Arts 2013. “We spent three days in a studio, with nothing but music as our spiritual offering.We admire how DJ Oil works as he would let us work with our elements and gave us inspiration. With Hope there it felt like she could do anything musically and it would come out great so she gave us real confidence” say the Monkey Nuts.

The album is a Magamba Network production and leading Zimbabwean creatives Comrade Fatso and Outspoken, are the executive producers.

Says Comrade Fatso

It’s been a great journey with Hope Masike& the Monkey Nuts. We curated the collaboration for Shoko Festival 2012. It was such a hit that we decided to work with the Monkey Nuts and Hope first to produce their EP and now their album with insanely talented French producer DJ Oil. And now we have got the Monkey Nuts signed with leading UK hip hop label BBE who have other major UK and US hip hop players like the Pharcyde and J Dilla. It’s an amazing step forward for Zimbabwean hip hop.

Two teaser tracks will be out on the 27^th March while the full album will be launched in the UK and Zimbabwe on the 27th April 2015.

The Monkey Nuts are a band based in Harare, Zimbabwe. Birthed in 2011, theyhave sharedthe stage with acts such asAkala (UK),Tumi and The Volume, &Oliver Mutukudzi.For three years DJ Oil, Hope Masike and the Monkey Nuts worked on finishing the project via email, bouncing back and forth between Zimbabwe and France until it was complete. The collaboration is a product of Magamba Network’s Artist Agency which has birthed projects such as sending rappers Synik and N.T.M to Senegal’s biggest hip hop festival – Festa 2H,flying rapper Psykotek to Berlin Music Week and bookingpoets such as Barbara ‘Breezy’ Anderson and Aerosol for Botswana’s Poetavango Festival.

The album is a production of Magamba Network in collaboration with the Alliance Francaise de Harare.

Magamba Network presser