Clememtia Mulenga aka Cleo Ice Queen is a hip-hop artist that was born in Zambia.
In a 2013 article on luskatimes.com some background regarding Cleo is provided. She is 22 years old and began listening to hip hop music at age 6, and started rapping herself when she was Zambia. 11 years old.
In an interview with Slam Dunk TV (sdtv) Cleo explains that she moved from her hometown in 2007 to South Africa. In the Slam Dunk interview it is explained that Cleo moved to South Africa to attend college, which forced her to put music on hold for a while, but in 2011 Cleo decided to pursue music as a career.
Luskatimes reports that Cleo is known for working with various artists from all over Africa, and has a few hit songs in Zambia, where she was born. In her bio posted on reverbnation, she is said to have started in an all-girl trio band called South West Divas (S.W.D.) that performed a variety of genres, Hip-Hop, R&B, Soul, Pop, Ragga and Dance.
It was explained that her alias “Ice Queen” was derived from her love of jewelry; in hip-hop jargon jewelry is referred to as “ice”. As a result of her love of jewelry she refers to herself as a businesswoman, because she launched a successful business selling a variety of jewelry, such as silver and water pearls.
Even though Cleo is successfully exploiting the natural resources of Africa, my impression is that Cleo strives to be compared with the popular American rappers that wear the exhibit the bling and extravagant fashions.
It seems that Cleo has some notoriety in Zambia, but she is not well-known outside of Africa. As a matter of fact the artists with who she has recently collaborated with are African artists, such as Crisis from Zambia, Hanni of Big Brother Africa, and LIC of Nigeria, to name a few.
http://www.sdrtv.com/2012/03/up-close-and-personal-with-cleo-ice.html
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