By Joseph Ssemutooke and Nigel Nassar

OUR President, Gen. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, has a rap song. Did you know? He raps for real in a GNL Zamba style. But he does his thing in Runyankole. Its adlib, “Do you need another rap?” nails it.

Basically, it’s a rap from traditional folklore ­— those stories our grandparents used to narrate to us before a bonfire. At some point, it talks about a chicken laying an egg, at another, a kid named Mugarura, and at another, the herding stick commonly found among cattle keepers. It’s typical rap.

This rap was one of the attractions at a pre-nomination party the youth threw for the President at Lugogo Cricket Oval on Saturday, ahead of the 2011 elections.

The party was for the youth to tell the President that they will rally behind him as their 2011 presidential candidate for the National Resistance Movement (NRM).

The highlight: the President’s rap, which he did at a past function but was remixed and turned around into a jiggy club banger.

The President nearly died of laughter when it was played at the party that brought together a sea of people, mostly the youth, clad in yellow, the NRM colour — yellow T-shirts, yellow bandanas, yellow dresses, yellow coats, yellow shoes, yellow body art, name it.

The President was later to recap the rap ahead of his speech — without the beat this time. In a way, he was implying: “Yes, that’s truly my rap hit right there.”

More than 90 local musicians entertained the sea of ‘yellow humans’, who gathered at the oval from morning till late in the night.

All day, artiste after another entertained the crowd. Bobi Wine, Mesach Ssemakula, Iryn Namubiru, Radio and Weasel, Jamal, Dr. Hilderman, Henry Tigan, Aziz Azion, Eddie Kenzo, Mathias Walukagga, various Eagles Productions singers; almost every big artiste you can think of, was there.

Then came a host of comedians, among them — Paddy Bitama, Pablo, Amooti, Daniel Omara, plus of course the Museveni impressionist, Herbert Mendo, who capped it all by asking the DJ, in real Museveni style, to play him P-Square’s song Yori Yori, which apparently should have been titled Yoweri. Almost everyone died of laughter, including the President himself, as Mendo went ahead and pulled off real Museveni dance strokes, this time with a hippy swagger to them.

The President arrived for the event at 6:00pm, flanked by his wife, the First Lady Janet Museveni, several NRM stalwarts, plus a convoy of cars, diggis, and boda bodas, to wild ululations and dance by the youth hoisting the NRM thumbs-up sign among other indulgences.

Eddie Kenzo of the Stamina fame couldn’t believe his luck shaking the President’s hand and being one of his entertainers; he remixed the song into Museveni Alina Stamina (Museveni has stamina).

His dancer, the mohawk-spotting Ronnie Julian, caught the President’s attention, so much that Museveni even touched his Mohawk while giving artistes his Presidential handshake.

GNL Zamba also had a moment to rap for the President, later getting commended by the president because like him (Museveni), some of Zamba’s raps borrow largely from our fore-fathers’ folklore.

Before he left the concert an hour after his arrival, the NRM flag-bearer thanked the youth for supporting him, and cautioned them to love their country and guard against HIV/AIDS.