Recho Rey: Recho Rey Was Suspended For her Gospel Freestyling On stage At School
Recho Rey is endearingly open about the struggles she has had to overcome to make it as a rap artist in Uganda.
She is open too about her naivety at the outset. She started “rapping” in the school playground, imitating a TV advert that had caught her attention.
But it was only when a group of boys asked her to join them that she discovered there was such a thing as rap or hip hop.
Once her passion for the genre had taken root, the next hurdle was her family. They are Seventh Day Adventists and did not approve of “secular” music.
Her attempts to appease backfired when she took the stage at her Seventh Day Adventist school with a gospel freestyle:
” I was actually suspended for almost a week. It wasn’t accepted.” she said in an interview.
She also has serious nerves to overcome:
” Putting myself out there has been a struggle, let me tell you, because I get anxiety – what do they think about me? When I’m going to engage with a lot of people or go on stage I get panic attacks sometimes.”
You would never know it from the confident persona she projects in songs like Who Is She, her breakthrough hit, which saw her engaging in the combat culture of rap, bigging herself up and dissing other artists.
Or in Imagine Uganda, where she talks about the problems ordinary Ugandans face and what the solutions might be.
She has also sung about female sexuality and how women should not be afraid to express themselves.
Clearly, there is depth to this young Ugandan artist.