Brenda Phiri Entertainment Reporter
The Zimbabwe Hip-hop Awards will be held on December 17 at the 7 Arts Theatre and organisers have stepped up preparations to make the fourth edition memorable. According to the awards chairman, Aldrian Harrison, various improvements have been put in place to guarantee transparency and the inclusion of artistes from various facets of the genre.

“The organising started two months ago and the response has been overwhelming. We have over 200 artistes that have submitted their work to us and entries are still coming through. Our focus has been on putting the word out and the response is evident that we are in the right direction,” said Harrison.
Artistes have been invited to submit their work at the organisers’ offices in Chisipite while an online platform has been made available for artistes who are unable to submit physical copies.

“We had previously set November 15 as the deadline for submissions but we have since moved it to November 22. We have made Facebook the main platform for communication with artistes and we constantly monitor because we know it is easily accessible to more artistes across the globe,” he said.

Conditions have been made for an artiste’s eligibility for nomination and these included having music played on local radio.
While it might be construed as a barrier, Harrison said it was meant to encourage artistes to push their music through local radio among other platforms.

“We want to discourage artistes from sitting on their work because consultations revealed that radio deejays have no hip-hop material. Artistes should make an effort to push their work and be visible on the entertainment scene. It is not limited airplay as we are considering those with videos and a minimum of three local performances this year,” he said.

The chairman said there were a number of surprises that have been with put in place for the red carpet event.
In terms of production and stage work, they have made intensive consultations with stage managers from regional countries to make December 17 exciting.
A total of 21 awards are up for grabs while at least two performances will come from artistes from different towns.

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