With a following of more than 570,000 and 7.7 million likes on Tik Tok, Aziz Kayihura, who goes by the moniker Shirtless Boss, is a force to reckon with on the streets of Kampala.
He is a deejay and talent promoter from Uganda known for promoting music talents from the ghetto and is also associated with the ‘ghetto talent search’.
His niche is interviewing people from the ghettos, freestyling on different instrumentals under the name Eno Nkambwe on Tik Tok.
Joining Tik Tok
Kayihura used to work downtown and used to see many people watching videos. Thinking to himself how he could also be the one people are watching, he gathered his friends who he used as a case study. ‘In 2020, I gathered some of my friends, asked them if they would be okay if we filmed them expressing themselves and they accepted. We started it as a joke but it kept on growing and this surprised us. This marked the beginning of my life on Tik Tok.
Creating a brand
Kayihura wanted something unique. He wanted something that stood out and having come from the ghettos of Kampala, being shirtless was what came to his mind.
‘People might see it as being abnormal but it represents something big. I represent the ghetto people. The people who are always ignored and if you notice, they are the people I am always hanging out with. So being shirtless shows that we don’t have anything,’ Kayihura explained.
Asked whether this is the perfect representation of the ghetto people, he said besides being homeless, lacking basic needs and using drugs, not having clothes or poor dressing is the other aspect and that is how he chose to represent his people. It is with this brand that he has also been able get an endorsement deal with Premier Distilleries as their ambassador.
‘Because my work involves dealing with local people, they found me as the perfect person to promote their Bikole Masavu promotion, which I have done for three months now. If it wasn’t for my shirtless brand, I doubt they would have approached me.’
Why the ghettos
He was born and raised in Katwe Kinyolo, suburbs of Makindye Division in Kampala, and because of this background, he feels people in the ghetto have a lot of interesting and untold stories, the kind of content he scouts.
‘I mostly visit different communities in the ghettos and people tell me about their challenges and I give them the chance to showcase their talents. There is a lot of content in the ghettos. That is why I took that direction,’ he says.
Earnings
Kayihura says Tik Tok does not pay and this is what people do not know. He, however, says Tik Tok is one of the avenues he uses for his content that spills over other avenues that help him get money.
‘I have other avenues like YouTube, Instagram and Facebook that pay. It is through those avenues that big brands approach us to work for them,’ he explains.
Life before TikTok
Before joining the platform, Kayihura was into music.
He had a recording studio where he recorded four dancehall songs, including Tuzilye and Makosa, but did not go further with his music career because of luck of financial support.
‘Music is expensive and I did not have the necessary support. I needed the push to progress but no one gave me a hand so I had to end that career prematurely,’ he says.
However, all was not lost because with his kind of work now, he uses that same studio for his video editing before posting on social media. It is not just him but other content creators like Shutter Empire also use the studio for their work.
He says the studio will not just stop at that as he looks into joining the movie industry, venturing into ghetto movies.He did not study past Senior Four and it was a personal decision. Asked why, the Tik Toker says the system is not supportive.
Because he was paying his own tuition from Primary Five by vending fruits around Owino market and later collecting scrap and selling it, no one could question his decision of dropping out of school.
Challenges
More recently, Shirtless Boss was in the news after burglars broke into his home and stole his valuable work equipment, including three laptops and a camera, among other things he uses in content creation. He says the things they stole had all the content he had short ever since he started out and this means starting afresh.