Even before the concert on Friday night, there were harsh tones about Sheebah’s concert, Neyanziza. Announced out of the blue, she had said the concert was her last before she embarked on leave from music.
In the press conference, covered in buggy clothes, she said she badly needed the leave since she has been on stage for the past fifteen years, but vigorously for the past ten.
In those ten years, she went from releasing Baliwa to Ice Cream, a song that is believed to have changed her fortune.
But Sheebah had already celebrated ten years in the industry; she had staged twin concerts at Kampala Serena’s Victoria Conference Hall and claimed the concert was a way of saying thank you to the fans.
But this concert had been a business move by the artiste, who seems to have acknowledged her power and influence more than any Ugandan artiste. Since there was a pregnancy of hers in the rumors, she probably noticed she could actually make money off it by organising a concert. Better still, to conquer a place she was yet to, Lugogo Cricket Oval.
To add the icing on the cake, she said the concert was her sendoff into a music holiday.
But Sheebah did not really confirm she was pregnant, and neither did she confirm it; what she resorted to was wearing baggy clothes and playing around the issue every time it was brought up in interviews; in fact, she could at times tell show hosts to come to Lugogo to see if there was indeed a pregnancy.
Some pundits were even worried; the woman was talking way too much about the would-be pregnancy than the actual concert.
Yet on Friday, all sorts of lights went off on the stage at the Cricket Oval at about five minutes to 10 pm. The reason for the marketing started becoming clear. Even clearer when the lights were back on, the stage was decorated with flowers, balloons, and a seat in the rear to create a garden feel, and the artiste was standing on that dimly lit stage in a sheer mesh outfit complete with a veil.
Her look and stage decoration channelled Beyonce’s 2017 Grammy Awards performance coupled with another Beyonce moment on the cover of Vogue Magazine, also from 2017. What the two moments had in common was that one involved Beyoncé announcing she was expecting twins during an interview, while the other marked her first public appearance following the announcement. Both moments were headline stealers when they happened.
In a snap, it was clear Sheebah had used her power to gather all her fans and probably others that were looking for a good time, to prove all the rumours right that she was indeed expecting.
Now that this was out of the way, it was time for Sheebah to dive straight into her extensive catalogue, or so we thought.
For some time she did, setting things off with a bouncy Ninda With those first lines, “Baby, where are you,” she sent her audience into a frenzy. Some were excited about the baby bump, while others, Sheebaholics, were excited their queen was on stage. Their excitement is so real that at times it feels like a possession happening in real time.
But into four songs, she asked her band to pause, and off she left the stage for about 30 or more minutes; things were never the same.
The rest of the show didn’t feel intended; Sheebah wasn’t into it as much; in fact, the real activity going on was on her social media, which provided 360-degree coverage of her outfits and how good they looked on her.
A prior photo shoot seems to have happened in each outfit and it was all playing out on the shows, which made it clear that the concert was just a cover-up, the real reason the whole thing was going on was for Sheebah to reveal what the rumormill already knew—that she was pregnant. The difference is that it was occurring on her terms, and she was earning money in the process—something we will explore further later this week.
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