The morning after the Dandora face-off was strangely still. CJ sat on the steps outside his building, a mug of lukewarm tea in his hands, the rim chipped from years of use. It wasn't silence that filled the air—it was weight. The kind that follows you even when your timeline is blowing up and your name is on everyone's lips.
For all the shouting, hashtags, and reposted battle clips, CJ's mind kept returning to one line—G-Kross's last words before walking out of that hall: "Crowds sway. Truth doesn't."
He sipped his tea, then slowly stood. It was time to shift gears.
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At Lulu's Apartment – The Debrief
Lulu's space was cluttered with notebooks, stage flyers, and at least three empty coffee cups. CJ, Charles, James, and Tico sat on the floor around a cheap plastic table covered in hard candy wrappers and orange peels.
Lulu wrote the word REBELLION in all caps on a flip chart.
"We don't follow up the battle with another one," she said. "We pivot. Make music that answers without clashing."
Charles nodded. "We push our own agenda. Let the people come to us."
CJ added, "So no diss tracks. But no silence either."
Tico unrolled a sheet with a sketched timeline. "Four tracks. One intro. One documentary-style visual. One street campaign. Then we drop a live showcase: Roots & Rebellion."
James chuckled. "You know, for a guy who used to skip meetings, you're kinda scary now."
Tico smirked. "Efficiency is rebellion, too."
---
Week One: Building the Blueprint
They split tasks. Lulu and CJ handled lyrics and concept arcs. Charles curated beats and handled production sessions. James reached out to vocalists and street poets to add texture. Tico ran logistics—renting Neville's studio three days a week, sourcing funds from community grants, and arranging for quiet places to shoot visuals.
CJ worked nonstop. He woke early, jogged through Mathare with headphones on, absorbed city sounds into his brain, then wrote until his pen ran dry.
At night, he sat with Esther Wambui, showing her rough sketches of his verses.
"You're not angry anymore," she said after reading one.
CJ blinked. "You don't think I should be?"
"I think your anger turned into something useful. That's rare."
---
Track One: "Before the Mic"
Opening track. The story before the spotlight. Charles laid a haunting piano melody under a heartbeat-like kick. CJ opened with a verse written like a letter:
> "Dear silence, you raised me gently,
Gave me echoes to sleep beside,
Taught me to hear the rhythm in hunger,
And the rhyme in pain I tried to hide."
Lulu followed with a soft-spoken hook:
> "Before the mic, we were breath,
Just trying to stay alive.
Now we rhyme for the voiceless,
So our pasts don't just survive."
They didn't blast it online. They played it once—on a battered stereo—for a group of youth from Kayole who had never stepped into a studio. One of the teens cried.
CJ took that as a review.
---
Track Two: "Streetlight Psalms"
James's idea. A gospel trap hybrid. It became a cypher track, each crew member taking turns. The verses were brash, hopeful, unfiltered.
> Charles: "We mix loops with loss, crash synths with sermons."
Lulu: "Every stanza's a streetlight flickering before dawn."
James: "My mother prayed louder than hunger, that's why I'm here."
CJ: "We built verses on borrowed hope and dreams they said expire."
Neville played it five times in a row before mastering.
---
Track Three: "Wrong Side of the News"
Spoken word meets boom bap. Lulu took the lead. It was personal:
> "My brother was shot on a Thursday,
But the paper misspelled his name.
Called him 'thief' before 'boy',
Printed his end without shame."
CJ's verse came next, restrained:
> "They make you a headline before a name,
Reduce your breath to frame-by-frame.
We rap not to entertain,
But to stitch what grief left stained."
The track sparked online threads about media bias, prompting an invitation to perform it at a university panel. They declined.
"Let the song speak," CJ said. "We're not here to lecture."
---
Visual: "Notes from Nowhere"
Shot with borrowed cameras in Dandora, Eastleigh, and Kariobangi. Black-and-white. No dialogue. Just kids rapping into the wind, elders watching, markets swaying to muffled beats. It ended with Esther Wambui humming a lullaby in her kitchen.
Uploaded at midnight. No promo. Still, it reached 8,000 views by morning.
---
The Reverb Nairobi Invitation
An email. Then a call. Then an in-person visit from the event organizer, a soft-spoken woman in a kitenge hoodie who said:
"We've had celebrities. We've had legends. But never something like this. You're not just music. You're movement."
CJ replied, "We're a mirror. Nothing more."
She smiled. "Sometimes that's exactly what a country needs."
---
Rehearsals & Reckonings
With the festival three weeks out, the crew began daily rehearsals. Long hours. Short tempers. But something was sharpening—not just the performances, but their bond.
CJ pulled James aside one day. "You good?"
James paused. "I love this. But sometimes I feel like I'm just… background vocals."
CJ handed him a notebook. "Write your story. Solo verse. Last track. You close the EP."
James's smile was the biggest CJ had seen all week.
---
One Week to Go
Blanco called again.
"I watched the visual. Respect. But let's talk distribution. You have no idea how big this can get."
CJ didn't say no.
He didn't say yes.
He said, "Let's talk after Reverb. After the people hear it raw. Not polished. Not packaged."
Blanco laughed. "Fair. But the game's watching, kid."
CJ ended the call.
He whispered to himself, "Let them watch."
---
Track Four: "Mic Drop on Memory Lane"
This was James's story. Raw, confessional, brave. He rapped from a place CJ had never heard in his voice before:
> "I used to steal rice from kiosks,
Now I serve stories in verse.
Grew up praying not to be noticed,
Now I rhyme to break the curse."
His voice cracked. Nobody interrupted. When the verse ended, Neville turned to CJ.
"This track will bury any doubts. You're not leading a crew. You're standing inside a storm made of voices."
CJ nodded. "That's the rebellion."
---
Final Mix, Final Words
They gathered in the Roots Room, drinking warm soda, passing around plates of samosas. The EP was done.
Lulu raised her bottle. "To rebellion with roots."
Tico clinked hers. "To music that builds, not breaks."
Charles added, "To battles worth fighting."
James: "To every verse we survived."
CJ stood. "To the silence that raised us. And to the noise we made out of it."
They drank.
Somewhere outside, the city waited.
But for now, it was just them. A crew of voices stitched together by memory, rhythm, and the fire that never went out.
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