Yo Rap Bonanza

Created in the early nineties, the annual Yo Rap Bonanza was a rap talent show sponsored by local Indian merchants. The talent show attracted large crowd wanting to see unique delivery of rhymes. Indeed, an important way for a group or MC to win over the audience was to come up with a unique style of rapping, or "mtirirko". In fact, most Tanzanian rap fans could easily differentiate a new artist from a veteran rapper by the fluency of his rap. [ [http://www.africanhiphop.com/index.php?module=subjects&func=viewpage&pageid=157 Africanhiphop.com :: African R
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The "Yo Rap Bonanza" competition marked a new era in the swahili rap scene because many rappers from regions outside Dar es Salaam took part, and thus contributing to spreading the genre to other places. [Lemelle, Sidney J. “‘Ni wapi Tunakwenda’: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.” In The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Pres]

Many artists gained their popularity after participating in the YRB talent show. Saleh j, one of Tanzania's hip hop leaders, won the competition and soon after became one of the most recognized Tanzanian hip-hop stars.

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