Album Review: Vee Mampeezy - Hits, Vol 1

A collection of hits from Botswana's Odirile Ishmael Sento, better known as Vee Mampeezy, including a few songs suited to high school proms. :)

I listen to a lot of music from Botswana. But as an outsider, I can't say for sure who's the most popular musician there. Vee Mampeezy is surely a contender. I've featured a lot of Vee music so far. His real name is Odirile Ishmael Sento, as noted above. As for what his stage name stands for - beats me.

Hits, Vol. 1 goes all the way back to the beginning. The chronology isn't completely clear to me, but I think the earliest song here is "Taku Taku," one of Vee's first singles. The collection stops somewhere short of "Your Time," one from 2023 that'll be on board if there's a Vol. 2.

The best of the bunch here, for my money, are "Sekukuni," "Dololo," and "Taku Taku." The latter being a killer song to kick off a career with. It's house kwassa (I guess...I'm still shaky when it comes to these genre labels) at its absolute best. Just beats, bass and that fluid, jingly guitar. I'd have ponied up my nine bucks just for these three songs, but "Kedi," "Zaza," "Letlhale La Tsamaya," and "Ola Kasi" are in the same vein and aren't far behind.

"Another Level," with Vee paired up DJ Sumbody, could perhaps be described as wistful house kwassa? Is that a thing? "Dumalana," in which Vee teams up with Dr. Tawanda (not a practicing doctor, I'm guessing) takes the house kwassa beat (rat a tat tat), drops the guitar and adds in a few synthesizer parts and some big choruses, to good effect. "Pompa Tswidi" is pretty much tailor made for the dance floor, with just a whopping beat and electronics.

"Happy" does the nifty trick of appending a hook to one word and "Meleko" works, even though it strips things down to mostly beat and vocals.

Finally, there are the prom songs. Yep. That's right. That's "Ke Tsamaya Le Wena" and "Important." Picture a high school prom. The lights go down. Heads are laid on shoulders. Slow music swells up. It's time for a slow dance or two. The music here is driven by soaring (and a little bit hokey) synthesizer parts and immense choruses, but it all works work quite well, at least in this context.

A strong collection, with only a few of the nineteen songs that didn't completely do it for me.

Here’s our Amazon affiliate link to the album.