ALBUMS/MIXTAPES, WHY DO THEY MATTER AND WHY I MADE ONE???

Chat, before I even talk about albums, I need to come clean and get this off my chest,  I love my Tanzanian roots, and I embrace them unapologetically in every creation of mine. Where I’m from will always and forever live in me but I can't forget I also grew up with influences from All over the globe, with things like sounds, stories, and cultures that stretched far beyond my neighborhood just like most kids after the Y2K era, we had the internet and cable, and all these ways that made the world feel almost small or connected in a certain way.

So when I’m telling this story from my perspective, from my environment, I'm well aware even my environment doesn’t exist in isolation. It exists within systems, within histories, within movements that are bigger than me, it exists with a connection of other stories, my ancestors story, my friends story, my countries story and so much more that I am yet to uncover and that’s why I believe in albums. Because albums are more than just playlists or collections of songs, they’re worlds where all these layers can come and exist together.

In 2024 when me, RIZA and the entire team sat down to create SICKMATIC is wasn't  by accident. We grew up studying Albums and living inside them. 

Records and artists like, Nas with this '94 classic Illmatic, Jay-Z’s  1996 Reasonable Doubt, Kanye’s  2004 College Dropout, J. Cole’s early run from The Come Up to Friday Night Lights, 1998 Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Ms Lauryn Hill, Brian Simba’s 2016 Masaki Theory, Fid Q’s 2019 Kitaaolojia, and Kendrick Lamar's  2012 good kid, m.A.A.d city  and 2022 Mr Morales & The big steppers

-shaped me personally into the person and artist I am today, even though some are clearly not from my time and place but they definitely found a way to strike home and resonate with who I was, my eardrums have become familiar with these records over the years, I have listened to each song deeply, each beat, lyric, and transition, and what I noticed is that they weren’t just a collection of tracks,

 They each had a central environment and character, someone navigating life, facing obstacles, wrestling with doubt, and still finding a way to overcome. Those albums were like books, they had story lines that would arouse conflict, resolution, and maybe a climax but every song was a chapter, every verse a piece of the character’s growth or an inside to his environment.

That same thread runs through my story. I have my environment, I have my character, that is CT, and now me and RIZA have an album. This album is our book, our narrative. It captures what we call the East African dream as seen through our eyes, our struggles and ambitions. But still, it’s bigger than just us. It’s for anyone out there who feels like they’re up against the odds, anyone who wants to grab life by the throat and bend it towards their vision. It’s for the real dreamers who want to change the world.

Before I take you down deep this rabbit hole, let’s talk about the environment we’re in today. The system has changed. Technology and capitalism made it easy for us to consume music, with only a cheap monthly subscription fee streaming has put everything in the palm of our hands and with that convenience came a huge price: music  has become less impactful, powerful, and very much less impressionable in a good way, Nowadays people just scroll past songs the same way they scroll past memes or trends. Music isn’t always lived with anymore, it’s produced, consumed and discarded.

Social media only doubled down on that. Everyone is curating an image and chasing trends, trying to fit into boxes and because of that we see identity crises everywhere. Young people are struggling to figure out who they really are and partly its because they don’t have music that speaks to their hearts and same time honor their roots and real environment, reflecting on their daily living conditions, not just the mundane, but also the esoteric and metaphysical aspects,  they don't get music that wrestles with their struggles and mirrors their dreams, instead all they get is an over-flooding of same sounding catchy industry polished riddims with no soul, ambition and rebellion. 

This is why albums matter. Albums are where the depth lives. Albums give you time to sit with the character, to hear their story unfold, to find yourself in their journey. Singles might catch your ear, but albums catch your soul and tell a story, and right now, we need that more than ever, or at least I know I do. 

SICKMATIC matters now because it tells a story

that isn’t being told loud enough: the story of Tanzanian youth trying to make a play in a global world, in a space where the Tanzanian voice has never been heard before, Tanzanian names are rarely spoken and our peoples grandiose culture and heritage is not recognized , the sooner my people understand that we are not an island that exists on its own, that we are more than just a country but a story that has purpose on  the global scheme, a story of freedom, unity and sovereignty the sooner SICKMATIC will click onto the collective consciousness, until then its a message to a young dreamer from a city that barely dreams.

 Dar is always moving, 24/7,  hustle, everybody trying to get it one way or another. But in all that busyness, many people stop themselves from dreaming bigger. They settle. They cage themselves in survival.

SICKMATIC speaks to the opposite, its about overcoming survival to thrive. It’s the voice of someone who refuses to shrink, who wants the world in his palms, who still believes in chasing impossible visions. It’s for those who feel the authentic hunger to carve their names in the fabric of reality, but don’t yet have their plates on the table. It’s for the kids who see the likes of  Burna Boy, Kanye, Rihanna, Elon Musk, and sometimes even Buddha and Jesus then think, why not me?

This album matters because it’s not just music—it’s a mirror and a map. It reflects our struggles, but it also points toward possibility and says "you don’t have to silence your dreams just because the city you’re in doesn’t dream loud enough"— and over the next few day I am going to take you through, a breakdown of each track and how it all builds up to this one big narrative, and not just a compilation of songs, stick w me and you won't be disappointed, 

LFG!!!