Stella Mwangi-Biashara (Remix) Review
STL has been flooding our social media with teasers of her new video’s release for weeks (slightly reminiscent of how Rihanna promoted her “Pour it up” vid before it came out). Stella Mwangi has gone the whole nine yards to make sure that we all know about her upcoming video. So upon opening the YouTube page and typing in “Stella Mwangi - Biashara (Remix)”, expectations were sky high and all I could think about was how much this video better be worth all the fuss.
The concept of walking down Biashara Street isn’t that much of a head scratcher, but she did look good doing it in the beginning of the video, flaunting her stuff in some kanga attire. It was quite cool seeing a Kenyan female musician flipping everyone off (showing the middle finder) and smoking a cigar in a music video. Not sure if Kenyan music shows have ever had to blur stuff out, but hey there’s a first time for everything.
The scenes with STL, Kristoff and Kaligraph Jones in some underground parking lot was seemed somewhat unnecessary to the lyrics but all the other scenes were pretty cool and did go with what the song was about, one of the chess-playing extras in particular was eye-catching. But what we had to put an absolute X on was when Kristoff held a wad of money against his ear as a phone. There’s nothing wrong with his rapping and the other scenes with him weren’t bad at all, but maybe tone it down on conforming to the cliché, we know you have it, just chill.
The video was all in all quite good, but what was with the constant product placements though? In the actual video and in the lyrics it seemed like they were trying to advertise for Equity and Safaricom. One of the Youtube comments even read, “This is an add for Mpesa, Mshwari and Equity.” We had to laugh at the accuracy of this comment, was she paid, or?
Nevertheless, Stella Mwangi is one of the biggest names in the Kenyan music industry. Her music videos always create a buzz with the amazing cinematography. Biashara the remix is a dope song and she looks like a boss in the video. In case you haven’t watched it yet, here it is.
By Cherie Kihato
