After a brief hiatus, the Unkut Hip Hop Awards are back in 2025. Founded by former Homeboyz Radio presenter, Ruby V. The Unkut Hip Hop awards offers a platform to artists and creatives in the Kenyan hip hop scene, giving them their flowers for a job well done. This year’s edition features some notable names as panelists, including veteran podcast Ado Veli, who is the founder of The AdoVeli Podcast, Otieno Arudo is an acclaimed writer as well as the man behind Ngoma Charts, Wycliffe Langat.
This year’s awards sees several artists nominated, including Vallerie Muthoni, Lowki The Great, Badman Bright, and Metro Suka Doba to name just a few. The return of the Unkut Hip Hop Awards is exciting, as it offers many of the Kenyan Hip Hop acts putting in the work to get recognized for the work that they have done all year.
In an industry where many award shows are inconsistent or built on charging and monetizing awards only to the benefit of organizers, the Unkut Hip Hop Awards is one of the few award shows in Kenya that allows voters to vote for their favorite artist for free, making it easy for anybody to vote.
At Radio 254, we are well aware of the thankless and often exhausting job of promoting Kenyan music. Regardless of this, we do believe that it is important to give Kenyan artists their flowers while they are alive and can appreciate them. That is why the continuing of the Unkut Hip Hop Awards and other award ceremonies is so important.
As voting closes soon and the ceremony prepares to happen, we would like to congratulate Ruby and her team on the return of Unkut Awards and what they are doing for the Kenyan music industry. At the same time, we would also like to congratulate everybody who has been nominated. We hope that both the artists nominated as well as the Unkut Hip Hop Awards continue not just this year but even in the years to come.
Sometimes appreciating someone doesn’t mean giving them money, it can be as simple as a word of encouragement, speaking life into someone, or just giving them their flowers.
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