Pam, Sanaipei, Kevin - Sema? What happened to these Kenyan popstars?

By Chale - Posted on June 12th, 2008

Kevin Waweru, Pam Waithaka, Sanaipei Tande Sema Popstars During the fall of 2004, a Kenyan friend sent me some Kenyan CDs. I had requested Nameless' On fire since I had fell in love with his music that year. She also sent me Naleta Action by Prezzo and Necessary Noize's NN II. I knew about these artistes but I didn't know of the group called Sema (mwewe). Their CD grew on me and even though I couldn't hear much about them other than they had won the Coca-Cola pop stars, I felt they were one of the better Kenyan groups. How were they able to remain invisible in the music scene? One of their members Pam Waithaka had some singles that were popular last year. What happened to Sema? And what are their members up to?

In 2005, news broke out that Sema had folded up. Kevin Waweru, Pam Waithaka and Sanaipei Tande were together no more. They had rose to stardom, and their debut album had hits like Ngoma, Fire in your kiss, Njo, Furahi Day, Tu klub wasee, amongst others.

Rumour has it that Pam had seen herself as a bigger entity in the group and was ultimately blamed for the split. She was also accused of dating one of the group's managers (Homeboyz Entertainment). There was also news of her allegedly dating with Kevin and catfights with Sanaipei. Pam has denied both affairs. Sana was also reportedly dating DJ John which is seen by some of the major reason behind the breakup.

Pam Waithaka released a couple of singles in late 2006. The first single was called Dhahabu which was a number one hit in Kenya and she had another track, Usimpe roho or Tatizo, which was also a huge hit. That track was a collaboration with artistes like Nameless, Jua Cali, Wyre, Doobeez, Nyash aka Nyashinski of Kleptomaniacs fame, Karma etc. She took some time to concentrate on her education at AUSI (Australian Studies Institute) in Nairobi. She is releasing an album in March of 2008.

A rivalry between Pam and Sana developed and it seemed they wanted to achieve prominence while proving to be better.

Sanaipei Tande became a presenter on Capital FM, co-hosting the ‘Hits Not Homework’ show with Eve de Souza. She left that and joined Kiss FM. Kev took to acting and got onto the KTN series Better Days, in which he also sings the theme song.

Sana kept singing though. She sang the hook for Jua Cali's megahit called Kwaheri. She is also rumoured to be working on her own album and has done a single with Big Pin called 'You'.

Sometime in 2007, news broke out of the two ladies, Sanaa and Pam banding with one Eunice Kamau popularly known as Karma to form the group, Golden Girls. They had reportedly secured a contract to do an album with America’s LA Face Records which houses re-known producers like LA Reid and Kenneth Edmonds a.k.a Babyface. Turns out it was an April Fools' joke.

Karma was actually awarded with the Most Promising Artiste award at the recent Kisima awards. She also worked on Ogopa DJ’s 2004 hit called 'Moss Moss'. She's also worked with The Historians, Nyashinski of Kleptomaniax and is prominent on Bigpin’s latest single 'Tera Moss'. She released a single in 2005 called Uwapi.

Pam Waithaka released a single Nimechoka featuring Abbas recently. You can see the video here.