Geoffrey Thige Kariuki is a fourth-year Bachelor of Commerce student specializing in entrepreneurship. He is also a rapper, going by the stage name, Gold Triggah, which comes from the initials of his name, GT.

His love for music is genetic; his father’s profession is in music, his mother is blessed with an angelic voice and so are his younger sisters. He released his first single, Elevate, last year and is working on a music video to accompany it.

“I began working on this song when I was in second year though at first I didn’t think it was good enough to be recorded. So I reworked it with the help of Afiketchi Kalama, a second year student of Bachelor of Arts in International Studies.”

It’s never too late to self-motivate

Listening to the song gives encouragement to keep soldiering on despite difficulties: Remember when you feel down, the only way is up; get beat down, get back up; it’s about time for you to stand up; keep in mind it’s never too late for young or old to self-motivate; either invent or motivate.

What motivated the lyrics of the song? “I wrote this song when I was going through a period in my life that was rough. Could I really go on? When I saw my grades drop, I realised I needed to get out of it and that I couldn’t continue letting it affect me. I needed to learn to live with the new circumstances. I then made sure my grades improved with every semester,” he says.

Gold Triggah on YouTube and SoundCloud

The description of the song on his YouTube channel says “he created it to remind ourselves to always keep moving forward no matter what hardships we face. The truth is, everybody is going through something in life that could either make them or break them. In short, don’t give up your dreams for someone else’s and never give up.” Besides Elevate, he has posted other rap videos on his channel that were done over different instrumentals and which focus on various events in his personal life and in the world. Gold Triggah can also be found on SoundCloud.

One can look out for him at student events, where he has become a familiar fixture. He last performed at the club fair in April and in the past has performed at Stratifest, talent shows, and “talent under the stars”.

Speaking on his future plans,he says, “I recently discovered TuneCore, an independent digital music distribution, publishing, and licensing service: with this I can redistribute my songs across the world. I am looking into that and hopefully will generate money from it because one gets 100% royalties.”

A player with the Strathmore basketball team, his favourite genres of music are hiphop, jazz, classical music and RnB. Can he live without music for a day? He hesitates, at the pain that thought evokes, and says that music is a necessity in life.

 

This article was written by Wambui Gachari.

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