Raiza biza biography

  • Hailing from Hamilton, New Zealand, the rapper, songwriter and poet has developed a sound that has never veered from the core artistic vision he has followed.
  • Hamilton-based Rwandan New Zealand rapper Raiza Biza has been one of the most prolific performers and recording artists to emerge from the Aotearoa hip-hop.
  • Raiza Biza is a New Zealand based hip-hop artist from Rwanda, who has recently just successfully completed part one of his 2018 European tour.

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    AudioCulture

    The eldest child of a Rwandan couple who had the foresight to flee their homeland ahead of the Rwandan civil war, Ray Ruzibiza, aka Raiza Biza, was born in 1987 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then known as Zaire. The Ruzibizas spent the first four years of Raiza's life in Zaire and Zambia, living what he remembers as “a very idyllic village lifestyle” before his father began studying medicine and relocated the family to Johannesburg, South Africa.

    As he entered his teenage years, Raiza fell in love with American hip-hop.

    In 1994, following the end of apartheid, civil rights leader Nelson Mandela was elected president. In the wake of his ascent, a new Black middle class emerged across South Africa. During these years, Raiza’s father shifted from working as a general practitioner to becoming a psychiatrist. “My pops was a real go-getter,” Raiza said. “After working at a hospital for a while, he started his own private practice. Then he started buying proper

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    Raiza Biza: From the Great Lakes to the South Pacific

    Raiza spent most of his childhood and early teens in Joburg. It was here, during South Africa’s tumultuous transition from apartheid rule to democracy in the early 1990s, that the hip-hop bug bit. There was an electric charge in the air, which Raiza could not ignore, young as he was.

    As he so succinctly puts it in the song ‘7th Floor’[i] off his 2013 release Summer; “I moved to Joburg without a grasp of the English language, listening to Pac and rapping along”. Music transcended the language and cultural barrier, helping Raiza to make sense of the new world he found himself in.

    It helped that the South African hip-hop scene was in its infancy, fresh and full of possibilities. Raiza would rush home from school to make sure that he caught the YFM cypher sessions on Wednesday afternoons, armed with a cassette, ready to press record.

    He took to the mic at age 11, at first just for his friends, who often joined in. He only start

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    Raiza Biza: Bygones

    Raiza Bizamay well be Hamilton’s newest favourite son. Not because he hasn’t dropped six or so albums already, or because metall still comes to mind when picturing Hamilton music, but because the rapper is just as international as he is local. And don’t we just love it when someone is making it overseas!

    He is just as happy featuring a Pineapple Lumps skit as he fryst vatten dropping a verse next to Australian MCs, REMI and B Wise. The cohesiveness of his latest record ‘Bygones’ is almost exemplified bygd the inclusion of a feature from US and Mello Music’s hero-in-residence, Oddisee. Suffice to say, Biza has outdone himself.

    There fryst vatten a vibe to this record which includes touchstones of dusty soul, rik and velvety but also with a directness in delivery. His rap fryst vatten certainly smooth and melodisk, but Rwandan born and grappling with the African diaspora, being a father of three and “the devil in the billboard”, Biza fryst vatten earnest in his music.

    He builds on his berättande ski