You know Just A Band, but have you heard of Nonini? If you haven’t, clearly you are not Kenyan. This guy practically created genge, Nairobi’s own take on hip hop. He teamed up with the Band to redo their hit song Ha-He… video is coming soon, stay chooned!

It’s here!!! The Band has been keeping the next video on the hush hush…. but here it is, visual goodness from our favorite Kenyan Super Nerdy Boys Band. Album available in iTunes, Beatport, Amazon, Bandcamp, eMusic…. you name it!

Straight from Just A Band‘s website:

From the first time we ever went on stage (in August 2008 – nerve-wracking!) for live performances and/or DJ-sets, we’ve always prepared some remixes of our own songs (and other Kenyan songs we like) to play before we start or after we finish. We’ve never released any of those remixes until today!

We’ve been asked many times to put those mashups and remixes together, so after Daniel unleashed a particularly fun set at the Kudishnyao street party, we figured we should put them together. Here’s “Kudish! The Sound of Soup”, available as a free download courtesy of Bandcamp (which is the coolest music platform we’ve ever worked with). It’s a collection of music we wish we could hear on radio. Grab it and play it loud, and most of all – tell us what you think!

At long last! Just A Band come to perform in Europe, more specifically Berlin, as part of the NRBLN – BLNRB cultural exchange program initiated by the Goethe Institute. At the infamously awesome Haus der Kulturen der Welt on December 1, do not miss it!!

BLNRB | Berlin Show | HKW | 01 •12• 2010 from NRBLN_BLNRB on Vimeo.

Marc of Afrobeat Blog has been very supportive of our work in the past. But his latest review of Just A Band‘s album 82 is the best so far… we’re happy he dug JAB’s music, in his own words:

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: nobody is doing more to expose the best underground music in Africa to increasingly wider audiences than Akwaaba. The fair trade record label started by Benjamin Lebrave has given the world possibly their best album yet, 82 from Kenyan pop outfit Just a Band.

You may know Just a Band from their incredibly popular youtube video for Ha-He, but Just a Band has much more to offer than imitations of Chuck Norris. This album covers many bases, mixing bumping club tracks with cooler hip-hop and heartfelt down-tempo tracks. The three artists that make up Just a Band, Blinky, Dan and Jim, bring out different elements of their personality to collaboratively create a style all their own.

Just a Band accomplishes something truly impressive: they manage to create music that has widespread mainstream appeal without totally foregoing their integrity as artists. Many African musicians struggling to find their way often go for easy cop outs and cheesy effects, but Just a Band creates a production style that sounds contemporary and clean. They also know how to mesh hip-hop style lyrics in English or Swahili with R&B style vocals and electronic beats. The end result is something new and interesting you probably wouldn’t expect to come out of Africa.

This album is something new and different. If you were to listen to it blindly, you might think it came from a house producer in Miami. That’s what I like about it though, it’s maintains its African identity while simultaneously being obviously affected by European and American electronic musical styles. While it’s not easy to cross over as a Kenyan pop star, these guys have as good a shot as anybody.”

Not sure why you would CHOOSE to make a youtube video non-embeddable… hopefully this won’t scare you away, and you’ll make the daring decision to click here and watch the video – you won’t regret it!

Who knew… the Kenyan viral craze reaches the pages of the almighty Wall Street Journal – clash of the titans! Read the piece here, and enjoy some of the recent magazine coverage below:

Have you not seen Just A Band‘s new video for the song Ha-He?!?! Do you not know about Makmende yet?!?! Read all about the viral craze from the Kenyan national press, and if you haven’t, do yourself a favor: watch the video and download the song for free.