After 2 years of silence, Kenyan female artist Kendi has finally admitted that she is almost broke and living in a single room to cut living costs.
While speaking in an interview, Kendi opened up about how her music career went downhill after spending a lot of money on Mainswitch Records to release her album.
“Mainswitch only managed to release one of my songs and when I made a follow-up, Philo was rude to me as he told me off, saying he would rather work with more promising artistes, ” she said.
In 2016, rumors broke the internet that Kendi had sold her car to raise enough money to survive. In the interview, Kendi admitted that she did, indeed, sell her car and move to a cheaper house all in efforts to pay Mainswitch Records for an album launch. Things, however,didn’t turn out as she had hoped and she ended up broke with only one song to show for it.
“I didn’t sell but moved to a cheaper house. But it is true I sold my car. I did both as I wanted to scale down and raise enough money to record an album but that turned out so badly after Mainswitch failed me,” she said.
Kendi explained the many financial challenges artists have to go through to make it in the music industry today. She admitted that she regretted her decision to invest so much in the album and expressed her disappointment with Mainswitch Records producer, Philo.
“I am still bitter with what Philo of Mainswitch told me on the last day we met over the deal. I invested my time in studio recording songs that were never released,” she said. “To record a song, one has to part with like Sh20, 000 for audio recording and Sh250,000 for a serious video, so you can understand why artistes are giving up especially when one cannot raise such money.”
Since 2016, Kendi has been living off the public eye and has been focusing more on her survival rather than her music. She, however, revealed her plans in 2019 to get back into music and try her luck one more time
” I have hired my own producer who is on a retainer all year. We plan to do about eight songs per year,” she said. “Thing is, if this comeback does not work, then I am done with singing.”