Prince Kaybee Shows Love And Appreciation To Amapiano Awards Organisers. Amapiano has taken over the country and the continent of Africa, it is only fair that they get their own awards show, solely dedicated to the Amapiano movement. Hosting alongside Moshe Ndiki at the Sandton Convention Centre is Zola Ayabulela Mhlongo, comedian and YouTuber Robot Boii, and hosting the red carpet is Zanele Potelwa.
Prince Kaybee took to social media to show love and appreciation to the organisers of the amapiano awards for the work they are doing in recognising talent in this genre. He wrote, “Just wanna acknowledge the people doing the Amapiano awards, an awards ceremony of this magnitude must have gone very deep in their pockets, very brave to take the responsibility of celebrating the culture that is Amapiano. Goodluck this Saturday.”
The awards’ head of communications, Qness Ndlovu explained how amapiano has been around for nearly a decade. The artists driving this genre forward have had some mixed reactions to the awards. There are 20 categories and winners of each will walk away with R10 000 while the coveted Song of the Year winner will pocket R50 000.
“When it started many people never thought it would make it this far. But it has and it’s only growing bigger and bigger. But you still haven’t heard of an amapiano artist getting approached by a corporate and being offered R2 million for an endorsement. Yet we’ve had that in House, we’ve had that in hip-hop and we’ve certainly had that in gqom. So, are we saying amapiano artists are undeserving of the same? This is way bigger than a list of categories. The vision is bigger than that. This is growth for a genre that is not being given enough acknowledgement on a corporate and on the level of an award,” he said.
“Amapiano has stood the test of time even when many people thought it wouldn’t last this long. But we feel it has so much room for more growth. Even corporates need to believe more in the genre and in these young artists and involve them from a brand level as they did with hip-hop, House and gqom. We believe amapiano artists have been responsible for a whole culture shift and deserve more recognition and more acknowledgement on an overall industry level,” Ndlovu said.