CHESS

Artists - Dancehall/Reggae

KANSAIKOU NUMUKUNDA DARBOE A.K.A CHESS Born from a non griot family of Professors, Lawyers, Doctors and other intellectuals, Kansaikou Numukunda Darboe a.k.a Chess is the only child who took a 360 degree turn and decided to take music as a career. Persistent, reluctant and confident chess would pursue his dream "his way" no matter what objection or criticism he receives. At age 13, he was crowned by the West African Arts Society as the International year of the Child with a scholarship to travel to Malaysia but his family refused. Chess who was mad about this move started to be considered as the out cast of the family which he ignored and kept on pursuing his dream at all cost until the entire family noticed that he loves what he does and started to support him. He traveled to the USA in 1990 and has been moving from state to state since then. For the past 4. Years, chess has settled down in Seattle City in Washington State. In 1999, he decided to fully take music as his career and invested greatly into it. He is gradually making a household name in the African communities across the world. Wanting to assimilate, chess started doing street rap with a group until he was able to construct a proper rhyme then he went solo and started to sing African languages on hip hop beats " I am the only nigga who can do this shit", echoed Chess. He currently run his own record label call Asi Koi Record with DJ Rndupa. I take hip hop beats and rhyme my wollof, mandinka, Fula, sarahuleh or jola in to it. That makes me unique and brings out the beauty in my music." He has worked with different producers since he started music including rootless records, D melo, Eric powers and he is presently working with Vitamin D. He released his first 9 track album in 2003 which sold 1000 copies and has been busy working on his second album which is due to be released in June 2009. In addition to his multi lingual skills, Chess is also a great performer. He does extremely well on the stage and indeed entertains his audience. Chess hass made a lot of appearances since the release of his debut album and some of his songs were made ringtones in Gambia. Chess is about to drop a second album in June 2009 and we at Gambuster wish him success when the album is released.

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