HAILING from the city of Gweru, Amard – born Nonkululeko Dube – is aiming to establish a profile bigger than the boundaries of her home town, as she works on making herself a serious player in the competitive Zim hip hop market.
BY ARTS REPORTER
Amard said she started singing at a tender age with her childhood friend under the guidance of her uncle, but became serious during her high school days after being enticed into hip hop by school mates.
“I started writing and expressing myself through rhymes when I was at high school, as I would write songs in the middle of the night after studying. My sound is reminiscent of old school hip hop, but with a relevance to the current environment,” she said.
A holder of BA (Hons) in Journalism and Broadcasting degree from the University of Salford, Manchester, Amard attributes her breakthrough in music to her interface with Take 5 and Dizzy Don.
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“It was through the tutelage of Dizzy Don that the name Amard was born, of a not-so-long name finding mission, where I considered calling myself Paradox because I saw people’s reaction to the fact that I rap,” she said.
“I had a similar bar in my song Fresh Fly where I say, ‘what you see and what you hear will straight up mess up your view of me’ but upon realising that I seem to attract a fair bit of drama, I decided to call myself Amard as a way of reversing all the drama and making it positive,” she said.
Amard said the song Lose My Number on which she collaborated with Crimson Blu is her break out hit, as it was well received by many.
After Lose My Number’s success, Amard went on to collaborate with Decarpo on a cypher and a love jam titled I’ll Do Anything.
“I have not been very active musically mainly due to the direction I felt I was being pushed which I was not comfortable with. In the interim I have been writing and I am currently working on my album Do Me to be released soon,” she said.
“The connotations of the title are quite ambiguous, but I assure fans it is not. Do Me is my proclamation that I am going to do what feels right by me, my sound and my character brought out by my music.”
The singer said she will be releasing a single track, Over-Invested, which is a heartfelt expression of love’s battle from the forthcoming album to promote it.