The Death Of Killer T: How Killer T Turned From Pretender To Top Dog

When a little disciplined but catchy voice started gracing the nation’s kombis and social media platforms on many ‘riddims’, people thought the man behind the voice as well as the genre were a passing fad.

But many years on, Killer T remains on the music scene, maturing in his trade and like the cliché goes, getting better with age like wine.

A scene from the deathly Bvunza Tinzwe Killer T video

And perhaps so have many of his fellow artistes who have remained evergreen in the Zimdancehall genre.

But there is a difference.

The difference is that wines do mostly get better with age but wines are different. His fellow Zimdancehall artistes are like a bottle of 2014 Sauvignon Blanc. You can get that at $10 a bottle in Pick n Pay.

Killer T? Well he is like a bottle of 1992 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon. Still don’t get it? Ok, this is the Grand Royale of all the most expensive wines out there. In a Napa valley wine auction in 2000, this wine got the highest bid, with a whopping price tag of around $500,000. Makes sense now?

Road to resurrection...Killer T in the casket shot.

He is heads and shoulders above the rest as he has understood that one has to go the extra mile in order to make an impact and sometimes one has to make huge sacrifices. Including dying.

So one breezy afternoon he lay in a Casket for the shoot if his epistle to God, Bvunza Tinzwe, shooting a death scene reminiscent of the Bone Thugs N Harmony classic game-changer Tha Crossroad which broke the death taboo and showed bravery.

Few, if any, Zimbabweans would ‘die the way Killer T decided to do and yet he went all the way because the business of music faces the changing needs of the people and challenges tradition in order to do things differently and better to create new pathways and possibilities.

The feedback the stills sent around the social media circles made sure that people eagerly awaited the release.

And it worked.

A few months after the release of the video, he has raked in over a third of a million in views on YouTube, no mean feat for a dancehall musician whose main crowd has little access to such a costly site in a demographic of internet poverty.

Effectively, the day Killer T died was the day his career got a strong fresh breath of lasting life. He dared go where few have contemplated.
 Watch Bvunza Tinzwe here: