Extra Large
Extra Large is an Urban Grooves music group of two members, Jimmy Mangezi and Norman Manwere. They are mostly known for their early day's songs Uri Roja and Wafa Wanaka. The duo performed Uri Roja with Judah E. Extra Large have reportedly released more than 10 albums.
Background
They joined the Zimbabwean music industry in 2003, and did not want to sound ordinary like many other youthful groups that were also entering the industry, as such they came up with the name Extra Large. For them, the name was more than just a household name and they knew it was going to draw attention.
They were inspired by Jamaican dancehall music ever since their school days. During their school days, they would write down lyrics of those Jamaican songs and used to perform them at school, in class and on variety shows. It began as a hobby, then after school, they happened to be there during the time of the 75% local content directive by the Government then they took advantage and recorded material which got a fair amount of airplay. Then Extra Large was born. They actually quit their jobs to do music. Norman was an NC programmer and Jim was a draughtsperson.
There was some misunderstanding on whether Judah E was part of Extra Large. Judah E went on to release songs by himself, the most popular one being Kabhasikoro. The duo uses mainly the Manyika dialect and bastardized English in order to poke fun at the Manyika people, known for their love of the English language. In the process, the duo manages to satirize a multiplicity of societal ills and successfully takes a light look at serious issues. However, their use of Manyika to achieve a comic effect constitutes the first negative socio-cultural implication of their music.
They seem to be saying that the Manyika people love the English language, but cannot speak it, as their know ledge is limited to a few lexical items which they cannot combine into good syntactical constructions to produce semantically adequate statements. This is evident from the song House Gero from the album Still at Large, in which Jimmy says: is respect house girl is respect you!’
Albums
Their first album was Ndikadai then we had Zvakora, Walembe, Small House, Large and In Charge, Xtra Ordinary, The Xpandables with ExQ, Many Moods of Xtra Large, The Xpandables 2, Twenty Fit In, Singles Collection and The Truth.
- The Truth (2017)
- Still at Large
