The blueprint to life was in the lyrics

By Abdullah IGIRANEZA.

The last thing I want is to start a generational feud with Gen Z, but when I say the music we millennials grew up listening to, and the artists we had, were the greatest of all time, it’s not an exaggeration. It is not even a debate. It is simply a fact of history.

Man, it is crazy how time flies. It feels like only yesterday when I was an 11-year-old kid vibing to those songs. Then you blink once, and suddenly you are in your 30s. What felt like yesterday quietly turned into two decades ago.

We millennials almost grew up the same way. We all had crazy cousins we were inseparable from, thick as thieves, and almost all of us had an older brother who seemed to know things we didn’t know. If there was a good movie or a beautiful mixtape, you only watched it or listened to it because your older brother brought it home.

Everything else followed the same routine: school, intense playing with the neighbours’ kids, revising lessons, tired as hell, eat, sleep, repeat.

Weekends were special. We waited for the only TV station we had at the time to start its programmes. It always began with the national anthem, followed by “Genda Rwanda uri Nziza,” then “Ibyiza by’u Rwanda.”

They would maybe play a Kayirebwa classic, followed by what felt like an eternity of boring BBC news before a cartoon like Samba et Leuk or Barbe Rouge would finally appear. Evenings were mostly news. News, announcements, and more news.

I cannot count how many times I woke up before everyone else, turned on those old pregnant TV screens, put the volume on zero, and stared at the rainbow colours waiting for the TVR technicians to put something on. Younger people today may not believe this, but television actually had a starting time.

TVR, for the younger generation, was what Rwanda Television was called back then.

The volume was always on zero. Not because I was disciplined, but because if my mother caught me watching TV that early in the morning, what would happen to my behind would echo for years.

But the real magic happened when the parents were not around. My brother would detach the speakers from our huge radio cassette, place them on the window, and play music for the whole neighbourhood. His cassettes were full of American hip-hop and R&B classics.

No matter which cassette he inserted, the first song was always “The World’s Greatest” by R. Kelly. I knew every single word of that song, but I had absolutely no idea what the lyrics meant.

The intro alone could inspire a stadium: “It’s the world’s greatest… the world’s greatest.”

Back then, we didn’t even know what being “the world’s greatest” meant.

Only later in life does it hit you. Especially when you read books like The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy, where he explains how our beliefs quietly shape our reality. Suddenly, those lyrics sound different.

“I am a giant, I am an eagle, I am a lion down in the jungle…”

You begin to realise that those lines were not just lyrics. They were affirmations. They were instructions. They were programming the subconscious mind long before we even knew what that meant.

That is why ideas like Giants of Africa, championed by Masai Ujiri, resonate so deeply. When people believe greatness is possible, greatness becomes possible.

It is impossible to talk about music, the millennial era, and life lessons without mentioning the great Lucky Dube. May his soul continue to rest in peace.

As children watching television with neighbours and relatives, we focused more on what was happening in the music video than on what was being said.

I remember the video for “Prisoner.” It shows a young student misbehaving in class, getting kicked out, and throwing a rock through the classroom window.

Naturally, that was the part that caught our attention, but while we were watching the chaos, Lucky Dube’s voice was calmly delivering a powerful message:

“He said to me: crime does not pay…
He said to me: education, education is the key.”

That line alone is a gold mine. A whole oil well of wisdom.

Yet many young people misunderstood the message completely. Some copied the rebellion but ignored the warning. They thought the toughness was the lesson, not the consequence. They didn’t realise that the story ends with the character paying the price for his choices.

Lucky Dube was not glorifying rebellion. He was warning us about it.

Bob Marley once sang in “Trenchtown Rock”: “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” And it’s true. Music moves us in ways few things can. But as I grew older, I started listening more carefully to the lyrics.

Life moves fast. We go to school, build careers, meet people, and form relationships. One of the biggest lessons I learned from music is simple: education is the key. Skills are the bridge between where we are and where we want to be.

Music also tried to warn us about relationships. R. Kelly once sang: “When a woman’s fed up… it ain’t nothing you can do about it.” Many people only learn that lesson after making the mistake themselves.

Others stay trapped in relationships that clearly no longer work. Craig David captured that reality perfectly in “Walking Away.” Sometimes the healthiest decision is simply to walk away.

Even marriage advice was hidden in the lyrics. My good friend Me Nyembo Emeline, whom I have invited many times to my TV programme, recently asked an interesting question: if marriage is supposed to last a lifetime, should a few weeks or months of knowing someone be enough to say yes?

Lucky Dube asked the same question decades earlier. In “It’s Not Easy,” the singer tells his mother he is getting married. Her response is simple but profound: “Did you take time to know her?”

The older I get, the more I realise that music was never just entertainment; it was philosophy hidden within rhythm. Those artists were talking about ambition, discipline, heartbreak, patience, loyalty, and consequence long before many of us had lived enough years to understand them.

But something strange happens with time: the same songs start sounding different. Lines we once shouted at parties begin to feel like advice, and lyrics that once sounded cool start sounding like warnings. In his classic hit “Angel,” Shaggy sang, “Life is one big party when you’re still young, but who’s gonna have your back when it’s all done?”

The blueprint to life was always there, quietly playing somewhere in the background of our childhood. We were just too busy dancing, dusaragurika, dukubagana, to listen.

The writer is a Rwandan journalist who enjoys telling stories about life, culture, and the lessons we often overlook.