DISCOVER: For Uganda’s Navio and The Mith, Being Legends Means Doing More

“They wonder if I’ll ever fall off my peak / I got here then added like eight floors.”

The Mith smoothly raps the line on “Been There,” the third track on GODLVL, his new joint album with Navio. After more than two decades in Ugandan hip-hop, both men are used to being called legends. As The Mith tells OkayAfrica, the title still makes him uneasy.

“Usually, the word legend comes with, like...maybe you should stop,” he says, but he has no intention of slowing down.

“Personally, I don’t feel I’ve reached my peak yet,” he adds. “I feel like there’s more for me to do. I want to challenge myself. I don’t want to be comfortable.”

That restlessness runs through GODLVL, the first full album from the two rappers as a duo. They were teenagers when they formed Klear Kut in the early 2000s. The group’s debut album, Mind, Body and Soul, produced hit songs like  “All I Wanna Know” with Juliana Kanyomozi. The music helped bring hip-hop into Uganda’s mainstream.

Today, they are grown men with long solo catalogs and decades of experience performing around the world. Their music carries everything that has happened between then and now.

“We’ve become men,” Navio explains. “We’ve gone through experiences, things with our family, personal hardships and the burden that comes with choosing this lifestyle.”

Their long history is clear throughout the virtual interview. The jokes keep coming. When Navio describes GODLVL as a complete meal, The Mith quickly adds, “I’m the sauce.” Beneath the humor is the competition between two friends who know exactly how to push each other.

Iron Sharpens Iron

That dynamic is central to the album. For Navio and The Mith, being called legends means they must keep improving and use their names to lift other Ugandan artists.

Even the title GODLVL reflects how hard they pushed each other. It came midway through recording, when both men felt they were “rapping at the best of our ability,” The Mith says.

The idea of making a joint project had been around for years. They thought fans either wanted solo music or a full Klear Kut reunion. After finishing The Navio X Project in 2024, Navio called The Mith early one Monday morning and said it was time to stop waiting for everything to line up.

They were in the studio that same day.

What began as a six-song EP soon grew into an album. For nearly two weeks, they wrote and recorded two or three songs a day. They treated the studio like an eight-to-five job.

“We did it exactly like work,” The Mith says.

They each brought different strengths into the room. The Mith describes himself as the kind of MC who would happily deliver 68 bars. Navio is often thinking about how to shape those bars into a complete song and how it will eventually work onstage. Each had to trust the other when the music pulled him away from his usual approach.

Navio says their years of experience allowed them to hear more than a beat. “When we hear the beat, we can already see ourselves onstage with it.”

“There was a competition in the studio,” The Mith adds. Navio had a “slick way” of challenging him. “On my side, I was like, I’m not going to slip up at all. At all!”

The result is a record that places lyricism at its center, and rewards repeat listening. The verses are packed with lines, while the features offer a wider view of Uganda’s music scene. Younger artists appear alongside Afrigo Band, Uganda’s four-decade-running legendary band. There’s even Tanzania’s AY Masta, who appears on the aforementioned “Been there.”

Being About It

The care they put into the album also responds to a question they had repeatedly faced in interviews: Why were Ugandan musicians not doing more to reach audiences outside the country?

At first, both Navio and The Mith admit they found themselves repeating the same criticism.

“We almost found ourselves falling into that narrative,” Navio says.

They offer a few reasons why Ugandan music may not travel as widely as its talent deserves. Language is one. Uganda is surrounded by countries where Kiswahili helps music cross borders, while many Ugandan artists sing and rap in Luganda. A song can connect deeply at home while being harder for listeners elsewhere to understand.

The other explanation is simpler: Uganda takes care of its own.

“Our industry has been kind to us,” The Mith says. Artists with loyal audiences can build lasting careers at home and sell out major concerts without relying on international attention. “If you have a fan base and you feed it, they’re going to keep coming.”

Once Navio and The Mith heard themselves telling other musicians what they should be doing, they decided to show what greater ambition could look like through their own work.

“Instead of talking about it, let’s be about it,” Navio recalls deciding. “Let’s be that example.”

That thinking shaped the album’s guest features. They wanted more listeners to discover artists such as Akeine, Maritza, Ssensamba and IzabelUG. Their names may sit outside the small group of stars often used to represent Ugandan music.

Working with Afrigo Band called for a different kind of care. According to Navio, the band allowed them to sample “Sikulimba,” a song that had not been made available to another artist in more than four decades. They wanted Afrigo’s older listeners to understand the verses while still meeting the lyrical standard expected of them.

“We had to craft our words so that we’re not so intricate,” Navio says. The aim was to capture “the spirit of Ugandan music in a band.”

For Navio, GODLVL shows that Ugandan artists “can hang and compete with any other industry on the continent and in the world.” Their names give them influence, and he believes they should use it to create more opportunities.

“If we have to kick open a few more doors to show you that you can do it as the younger artists, we’ll do that,” he says. “You’ve got to lead by example.”

Their plans are already reaching beyond Uganda. They hint that GODLVL 2 could feature artists from Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria and Ghana. 

“I’ve started writing already,” Navio says.

The Mith laughs. He says Navio often announces albums before everyone else has agreed. It captures how they work together. One pushes forward, and the other rises to the challenge. Neither lets the other get too comfortable.