Renegade

Allow me to take a moment of your time to introduce you to a fresh young musician that hails the African Music World from Malawi. Renegade is something a little different, something new and something a little special.

The youngest of two children Andrew Kaiya, AKA Renegade was born in Blantyre in 1989. From the tender age of 10 Andrew developed a love for performing and music in general through the influences of close friend Alick Maere. At 15 Andrew was lucky enough to have recorded his first track, “Move Over” which was first played on air by the popular DJ Lomwe who himself was a BBA Amplified Finalist.

Andrew’s life personally went through a rollercoaster of emotions when he lost both of his parents very early on in his teenage years, and it was through music that he was able to focus himself and find meaning to life through his work. Things really began to look up for Andrew beyond this point, and at 16 Andrew made a decision to pursue music as his chosen career.

Renegade’s first album was a collaboration with his brother Pilgrim entitled “The Experiment” and was an adventure into moulding the music style that they duo became popular with. A soft entanglement of Afro Pop with Electronic effects and Urban groove, they forged ahead and burned out a second album called “The Sequel”.

Their popularity grew until in 2009 the two released their biggest success as a duo called “The Dream vol 1” a mixtape that was hugely popular on the Malawian music scene. At around this time Andrew began working on his solo career and released a mixtape later in 2009 called “Somebody Stop Me” which included the massive hit “The Renegade Effect”, the tune that brought Renegade to my attention.

In 2010 Renegade cut a music video of the tune which proved to be an instant success and throughout that year added to his popularity with a number of live gigs. In 2011 he shot the video for “Go Tell Em” featuring Gwamba & HASO which is still popular on YouTube and is now featured on African Pulse.

Having enjoyed success at a local level, Andrew began to network with other Malawian musicians and realised that he had an opportunity to branch out and launch his own label in Malawi known as Hidden Talent Entertainment. Since that time Andrew has enjoyed working with some of Malawi’s rising stars in the Urban Music world.

Determined to succeed and break out into an even bigger market through Southern Africa in 2012, Renegade is currently working on a new album called “Sorry for the Intrusion” and while some would hesitate to rate him, we feel that big things are to come from this talented young Malawian music maestro. Andrew himself says people will be in for a surprise when we get to hear his latest offering, and we agree that there is some exciting stuff happening at Hidden Talent Entertainment this year. We’ll be sure to keep you all posted.

Find out more about Renegade

Follow Renegade on Twitter

Listen to Renegade on ReverbNation

Watch Renegade on YouTube

Our thanks to Andrew Kaiya and Hidden Talent Entertainment