Daniel Lubwama Kigozi popularly known as “Navio” is a Ugandan rapper born on 18th
October, 1983 being born to “Engineer
Daniel Serwano Kigozi & Physician Dr. Maggie Kigozi” and he is the last
born of three siblings to his parents.
Navio started schooling at “Entebbe Church Nursery” for infant school and he then joined “St.
Andrews” in Kenya for his primary school completion and for his
secondary level he joined Aga Khan Secondary school but he completed his
secondary level from “ISSA
(International school of South Africa)” and he did his university at “Monash
University” where he
studied International Relations and Media Studies.
While growing up, Navio
listened to a lot of music including his elder brother's huge collection of rap
music from artists such as “Run–D.M.C., MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice and the Beastie boys and would try to mimic them but when he was about 10
years old, his mother heard him rapping in the living room and she came over
and asked him whether it was Vanilla-Ice rapping but surprisingly it was her son
and cause she got so excited she took him to Baava studio owned by Hope Mukasa to
record a song.
At the age of 16, Navio
formed a hip hop group called “Klear Kut” with his four
closest friends Mayanja Tom (The Mith)", Jonathan Leslie (J-Baller), Abba
Lang (Langman) and Habib Abdul Hussein (Papito). The group's debut album was
"Mind, Body and Soul" in 2000 and it was a huge success and generated
several hit singles including "All I Wanna Know" with Juliana, "Remember", and "Let’s Get It on" and
the group helped stir the popularity of the Hip hop genre in Uganda.
Starting off his career in 2000, he was part of the
award-winning Hip hop group Klear Kut that
introduced the term "Lugaflow" to describe Uganda's hip hop scene and
in 2002, Klear Kut became the first group to receive a Kora award nomination
where they were nominated for "Most Promising Newcomer" and 'Revelation
of the Year" though the following year the group released “K2” as their second album and although it was not
as big as its predecessor it produced major hits like "Mon Coeur” and “Murder
of Crows” featuring Rania, and they later did a remix of "Superstar"
featuring Bebe Cool.
Klear
kut received the PAM Award for Best Hip hop Group in
2004
Since 2010, Navio has been a part of the African supergroup One8
which included members like 2Face (Nigeria), Fally Ipupa (Democratic
Republic of the Congo), 4x4 (Ghana), Movaizhaleine (Gabon), JK (Zambia)
and fellow East Africans Amani (Kenya)
and Ali Kiba (Tanzania) and the first release from the group was "Hands
Across the World" written and produced by R. Kelly.
Before leaving for South Africa, Navio wrote
and recorded a song, “Rukus” with Ugandan recording artiste Peter Miles and the
song went on to become one of the most popular records of his career and it was
featured in the season finale of Big Brother Africa 3 in 2008 four years after its release and during his
hiatus he occasionally featured on other artists’ recordings such as the Blu*3’s single called “Burn” in 2007, Jemimah Sanyu's "Amaaso go
googera" in 2011 and many more.
Navio officially returned to the music scene in 2008 after
graduating with a degree in communications from Monash University's South African branch with
his debut solo album "Half the Legend" which was released in 2009 and
generated positive reviews from critics and the audience and generated the
singles "Bugumu", "Salooni" featuring GNL Zamba, "Ngalo", and "Respect"
with the Kenyan artiste Jua Kali and he also featured on Bobi Wine's "Badman from
Kamwokya".
”Half The Legend album earned him the Best Hip hop Artist award
at the Pearl of Africa Music Awards and nominations at Kenya's Kisima Music Awards for
Best Male Artist, Best Music Video and Best Hip hop Artist of the year.
Navio is best known for his
successful solo career with hits such as "Ngalo", "Bugumu",
"One & Only", and "On and On" with American R&B
legend Keith Sweat.
In 2014, Navio was one of the featured
artists in the second season of "Coke Studio Africa" and in
2016 he won the Buzz Teeniez Award of “Teeniez Role Model”.
Since the start of his career, Navio has so far released
five albums including “Half The Legend (2009)”, “African Hustler Music (2010)”,
“Pride (2014)”, The Chosen (2015)” and his latest being “Strength In Numbers
(2020)”.
