Tanzanian artists shy away from promoting Kenyan collaborations because of various reasons. As highlighted by Nairobi Gossip Club on Tuesday, October 10, this phenomenon had become popular in the entertainment industry.

There are a variety of reasons that I tried to talk about on my Facebook account but I felt it would be better to do a deep dive here. Khaligraph Jones had a collaboration with Tanzania’s Harmonize 7 months ago. The two made a very interesting jam in Kwame that hit over 2.4 million views on YouTube.

Harmonize went ahead, three days later to release Single Again which became one of the most popular songs on the continent. The song ended up hitting over 22 million views on YouTube.

The same happened for Akothee when she featured Diamond in a song 7 years ago. The song did not get as much support from Diamond as it should have. It got 11 million views with Diamond continuing to release songs such as Utanipenda that was a huge success.

These two scenarios show that Tanzanian artists rarely support music that they have been featured by Kenyan artists. But it is not different from any other artists who are featured in songs. Artists tend to avoid promoting songs they have been featured in for fear of being outshined or losing their brand. The most popular of excuses comes in the form of free marketing.

This has caused so many good songs to go unnoticed just because an artist decided they were not going to promote work that they were involved in.