How The Pride Duo; The “Freestyle Boys” Are Revolutionizing Cameroonian Music
Recently, freestyle videos of two young Cameroonian rap sensations have been trending on social media. I call them The Prides because coincidently, they both share the name Pride and indeed are showing us that they’ve got what it takes to keep making Cameroon proud as far as music is concerned.
They are 22-year old Tanue Pride AKA Yxng Prido and 20-year-old Ego Pride. They are both studying Engineering and Agriculture at the University of Buea, respectively.
Their style of music is unique, their energy is top-notch, and judging from their numerous freestyles and mash-ups, they may just be some of Cameroon’s biggest music acts in the next few years.
Their rap is a mixture of English, French, Pidgin English, Mboko (Franc-Anglais), and vernacular. This blend is very unique and not something that we have seen often in Cameroon.
They thus have the potential to inspire and set a new pace for the youths who want to get into music and perhaps create a new music school with their originality, strong lyrics, beats, sound, energy, and charisma.
According to Yxng Prido, he believes as an artist it is very important to have a sound or beat which identifies you and he is currently working on a niche that will identify his sound, beats, delivery, writing, rhyming, and in fact what he can call a new school in Cameroon. He doesn’t have a name for that yet but he is working towards that.
We have had different generations of musicians in Cameroon from Bitkutsi with the likes of late Anne-Marie Nzie being the original innovators, to Modern Makossa headlined by the likes of late Manu Dibango, to a fusion of Congolese soukous and makossa, a blend which has produced Petit Pays, Marcel Bwanga, Kotto Bass, Papillon, and Jean Pierre Essome and what has become known as the new school with different genres like Mboko, Afro njang and many other imported genres which have produced our present urban artists.
Now, with what the Prides have, the two may just be what Cameroon needs to revolutionize the music industry and particularly the rap sector. What we have seen and heard from them may sound like “mboko” something we have already heard but this is quite different because of their ability to blend all popular languages of Cameroon into it, their originality, their exceptional creativity judging from how they effortlessly blend the Cameroonian street stories and street language into their freestyles and music.
And what will even make you more convinced that these young talents are definitely a veritable force in the music industry is how they have been able to impact music lovers so far with what they are doing; I mean they are trending on blogs, you will see their freestyles on Whatsapp status, different TikTok accounts, Instagram, and everyone is just asking “who are these guys?” Cameroonians including A list artists like Mimie are dancing and vibing to their freestyles which means fans of music in Cameroon love what they are doing and are ready to give them their support.
It’s worth noting that they do not only do freestyles, they have done a couple of songs and while Ego Pride is signed to Talanga Motion Pictures while Yxng Prido is an Independent Artist.
The Prides are definitely a force to be reckoned with and so we definitely have to watch out for them and see how they help shape Cameroon’s evolving music industry.
