Khaligraph Jones

Through steadily released, consistently well-received output, Khaligraph Jones became one of Kenya's most well-known rappers. Over the course of a lengthy career that began in his late teens, Jones' style came to incorporate equal parts street toughness and pop appeal, reaching new levels of accessibility on his 2018 full-length Testimony 1990. Khaligraph Jones was born Brian Ouko Robert in 1990 and grew up in one of Kenya's more dangerous areas. His firsthand experiences with crime and poverty eventually became an integral part of his musical fabric when he began writing lyrics and developing a rap style in his teens. In 2009, Jones won Channel O Emcee Africa, a highly visible competition that propelled him immediately to nationwide acclaim. He became known for his inventive freestyle cyphers, and in 2012 he issued "Tema ma Verse," a collaborative single with Abbas Kubaff. Jones' debut studio album, Point of No Return, was released in 2014, and he climbed even further up the ladder with constant airplay and frequent features on other rappers' tracks. Before the year was over, he followed the album quickly with Autograph, a collection of previously released tracks. Over the next few years, Jones issued singles in a multitude of styles as well as the 2015 mixtape Eff Off. This set the scene for second album Testimony 1990, which was released in 2018. At this point, he was becoming one of the biggest rappers in Kenya, and he continued releasing new work while helping new talent get a foothold in the music industry. In 2020, he issued the mixtape The Take Over. ~ Fred Thomas