Is Gengetone Back, or Are We Fulfilling The Law Of Vacuum?

Like the infamous phoenix, Gengetone is rising from it’s ashes after setting itself on entertainment fire.

What do they call it when you keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results? In Spanish, it’s called Locura. Insanity, however, is the word used by Albert Einstein to describe a rigid way of doing things while expecting magical transformation. That’s insane, right? However, I am inclined to believe Albert Einstein on this one; after all, he is the father of modern and quantum physics. This is exactly what our Gengetone artists are doing; by releasing new music that still sounds like we are in 2018, it makes me miss campus.They have not matured in their artistry, and surprisingly all they are rapping about is profanity, sex, and drugs. Same music, same lyrics, same beats , guys, we are tired.

The Father of “Modern Physics”

For the last couple of weeks, there have been intense yappings in the entertainment industry about “The Return of Gengetone.” This came after Ethic Entertainment and the Ochungulo Family regrouped and released new music projects in big 2025. This was seen as the long-awaited and highly deserved comeback of the Gengetone Boys, a genre that has been in mainstream play since 2018, but dissapeared somewhere along the way due to reasons best known to them. I have written extensively about the transition from Gengetone to Arbantone; I don’t intend to bore you with a repeat.

For starters, Gengetone is not returning because it never left; it just died an unnatural death. Follow me, please. When I speak of death, I mean the collective effort that the industry had jointly invested into making Gengetone the flagship Kenyan sound, dissapeared. This came as a result of the artists themselves dropping their guard immediately they began reaping the benefits of their hard work. As soon as the money came in, the grit, vigour and ambition of most of the artists disappeared. Another reason is the refusal of Gengetone to evolve as a genre, maintaining the same profanity and hood mechanics that we were all tired of. I mean, it was cool at first; they gained our audience, but the hard job was maintaining it.

In the 3rd of January 2025, Ethic released their second latet song, "Ukitaka,” a song that has amassed over 1 million views on Youtube in that period. Two weeks later, they released another song, "Zama,” which is course to hit half a million views in the same period.

These are very good numbers, but I will raise a point that will prove that Gengetone didn’t just die; the Kenyan audience killed it as a retaliation for artists not listening. Between 2024 and our present day, Ethic has released 7 songs together with music videos. That is an average of one song every two months, a sustainable venture for a mainstream artist.

The numbers here reflect that Gengetone was up and alive, the audience just needed the “FOMO” effect to return to listening to the genre.

Gengetone did not leave; the audience got tired, and now that Arbantone and Hip Hop are slacking, the audience needs to hear something. If you look at the output of the Ochungulo Family, they have been releasing music consistently too, yet it is in big 2025 that people are returning to their music with enthusiasm. A look at the YouTube page is a testament of unappreciated art.

In my own ignorant opinion, I would say that Gengetone is fulfilling the “Law of Vacuum.”

Aristotle's law of vacuum, also known as horror vacui, states that nature abhors a vacuum, or that nature will fill any empty space. This means that there are no naturally occurring empty spaces. 

Arbantone as a genre is slowly losing it’s grip on the Kenyan audience; Kenya, as usual, is a volatile market for creative material. HipHop has been asleep for a while while the R&B side of entertainment has isolated themselves and is just doing their own thing. There is a growing vacuum of mainstream music in the Kenyan industry, and what other solution than to revive an already existing genre?

The artists should grab this revival and bring back the sound that resonated with the Kenyan audience, a means to finally place our music globally on a large scale. The artists should again read the room; the Kenyan atmosphere right now doesn’t need to hear about how you chewed khat and smoked weed the whole weekend, bro. I will do that by myself.

Another thing they should understand is that the audience that made Gengetone a success has moved on; people my age are no longer teenagers. I was on campus my first year when Ethic released “Lamba Lolo.” Now I am the father of two young boys. The campus kids in this new era already have their own artists and genres they are fanboying over; the only way for Gengetone to sustain itself is for the artists to make music for their original fans, us. We can NOT be matching forward anticlockwise, that is the same as mark timing.