Jamaican reggae band, Morgan Heritage, will next week release a video for their collab with Ugandan Grammy-nominated singer, Eddy Kenzo.
The Grammy winning band will release the video which also features South African rapper and singer, S’Villa, on Wednesday, August 3.
The song titled You Got to See the World comes ahead of the Morgan Heritage Reggae Sumfest 2023 and is on Morgan Heritage’s latest 21-track album – The Homeland – which was released in April.
It was produced by UK-based Zimbabwean award-winning producer, Jusa Dementor. The video was directed by Jordan Hoechlin & Mojo Morgan.
While The Homeland has collabs with Popcaan, Youssou N’Dour, Shaggy, Beenie Man, Shatta Wale, Mádé Kuti among others, Kenzo is the only artiste that featured on two tracks on the album. The other song being Long to Be Home.
The same album featured East African household names Jose Chameleone and Otile Brown.
On their stop in Kampala in May as part of their global album promotional tour, Morgan Heritage shot some scenes with Kenzo, for one of the two songs.
Kenzo has had a good year following the release of his fifth studio album Made in Africa which came out in April of 2021. Songs like Weekend and the controversial Born in Africa (a rendition of Philly Bongoley’s song) have received good airplay.
Eve notably, the BET award winner was this year nominated for a Grammy Award for Gimme Love, a song by American singer Matt B on which Kenzo was featured. He however lost the accolade to Zakes Bantwini, Wouter Kellman & Nomcebo Zikode.
Many would say featuring twice on Morgan Heritage’s album only reaffirms Kenzo’s deliberate quest to expand his global appeal.
In Uganda, many artistes have come before him. Yet not one of them has been as ambitious. None has won a BET Award, none has toured as much, let alone be so intentional in widening their musical footprint beyond East Africa.
During his Kololo festival in November last year, the singer proved his far-reaching influence. He was able to feature at least 10 foreign artistes including Harmonize (Tanzania), Chasebell (U.S.), Mampi (Zambia), Matt B (U.S.), Kiflex (Cameroon) Bahati (Kenya), Bruce Melodie (Rwanda), Tribe Mark (U.S.) and John Frog (South Sudan) who all performed.
With all these (except Mampi), Kenzo has had collabs.
At the beginning of this month, Kenzo released Ukulele Essanyu, a collab with Hawaiian singer, Ho, which was mixed and mastered at Universal Audio Studios. The two were both nominated in this year’s Grammys.
Established in 1994, Morgan Heritage, which is composed of some of the late Reggae singer Denroy Morgan’s 29 children, began initially as a recording octet, then a quintet. However, it has morphed into a trio comprising the three brothers – Roy “Gramps” Morgan, Peter “Peetah” Morgan and Memmalatel “Mr. Mojo” Morgan.
