Lyrical Renegades: Reframing Narratives of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Kenyan Urban Margins Through Hip-Hop

ABSTRACT The outbreak of Covid-19 in Kenya saw a resurgence of state policing, violence and repression as the state sought ways of decisively containing the spread. This was accompanied by a discourse of “being at war” with a novel and invisible enemy. As a result, terms such as shutdown, lockdown, curfew and isolation were mobilised by state agents and organs not only to refer to the concerted efforts of dealing with the pandemic; they also served to show the state’s reach and to justify the excessive exercise of power and control. Through the analysis of two hip-hop songs, “Pandemic” by Kitu Sewer featuring Robah, and “Pandemik” by the Ochungulo Family, this article examines the artists’ representation of the state’s idioms of closure and pandemic-mediated violence, while at the same time necessitating a reimagination of sociality, freedom and resistance in Kenya’s urban margins. Analysing the songs’ recourse to Kenyan anti-colonial struggles and ratchetness, I argue that the artists present Nairobi’s margins as war zones where several pandemics intersect. In addition, I contend that the artists invite a rethinking of a collapsing world in the face of multiple pandemics as offering the possibility of regeneration and transformation.