By Sindiso Dube
After being nominated six years in a row for the Zim hip-hop awards best Club DJ, but with the gong proving elusive, DJ Drew (pictured below) has taken positives rather than disappointments from every time his name is carved among the list of nominees.
Born Andrew Nyikadzino, the Harare-based DJ has performed at One Plus One, Beer Engine, Red Café, Londoners and many more night clubs.
“Being nominated for such a national and prestigious award is big and it adds something on your work and CV. Once you get nominated you then expect to win, but it hasn’t been the story from the six years I have been nominated,” DJ Drew said.
“In the early stages it got to me, I would leave the awards venue angry and asking myself if the awards organisers and judges were not noticing my works. But I then took a positive mindset and told myself that everyone is watching what I am doing and being among the nominees is huge and means you are noticed, the winner would have just put extra effort and I had to learn from that and I continue working hard.
“Hip-hop is a culture and when a peer wins an award, I believe it’s an award for the culture, it’s for everyone. Awards night are to celebrate excellence, but most importantly to celebrate a culture that would have been upheld for a whole year.”
DJ Drew has been compiling the latest and high-riding hip-hop tracks putting them together on a mix and the compilations are released every fortnight.
The first edition features Gze, Noble Stylz, Jnr Brown, Potato, Asaph, Crooger, Tashamiswa, Shiddoh, Phreshy, MUSE and Criswiss. The last edition features songs from Tha Slayer, Asaph, Bris Mbada, R Peels, MyK Pimp, Prout, KayGee-40, Forbes and Kunta 05 “I started the Zim-hip-hop mixes so that we keep rap music alive during the time of lockdown,” he said.
