The cat has 9 cans of beans

Some celebrities seem to re-invent themselves with ease, even after they have seemingly gone over the precipice. Others, once they go over the cliff, get iced — like Vanilla Ice and Mr Nice — and never recover. But then there are those showbiz cats that seem to be in the limbo between ‘has been’ and ‘might make a comeback’. DAVID ODONGO and TONY MOCHAMA have a go at these ones

Cess Mutungi

Cess has been hired; fired, re-hired so many times we have lost count!

Her life is a rodeo, yes, but whatever cameo role she’s playing when down, Cess is never out — and always gets back in the saddle.

CMB Prezzo

Now this is one ‘prezzo’ who has had ups-and-downs, just like the real one in State House. From exploding onto the scene from the air, Prezzo might have gotten trapped by his own image (which the media loved and fed to a voracious Pulse public), and spent far more than he intended to, in living the blingy lifestyle!

Now his expensive tastes may have caught up with him.

His ‘enemies’ like Jaguar claim the ‘king has lost his bling’, business is doing badly, and he split up with his wife — Daisy, who is living with their toi in one of the Kileleshwa flats — thinks the flower of marriage has wilted somewhat.

Whatever the case, do not count Prezzo out — especially as a big player among the youth in the upcoming 2012 political campaigns. If you do, you may end up swallowing that proverbial wembe.

Caroline Nderitu

She is a really nice person with a beautiful smile, but Caroline exercises her poetic license to the fullest every time she performs. However, having said that, corporate companies have clearly embraced her. Still, and we say this with a poetic sigh, like a plastic flower that is pretty but with no scent, Caroline never says ‘die’, even as the freshness is never in the near nursery rhymes she sometimes recites as the recent case in the promulgation ceremony. Her act is cute, and the words are painfully acute to anyone with a clue as to what poetry entails.

Suzanne Gachukia

She was once the only celebrity songstress that we saw regularly on TV, long before Amani, Emmy Kosgei and Size 8 took over our screens. She was the powerhouse behind the Samawati Studios, and the powerful backer of talented divas like Mercy Myra in the era before ‘local celebrity’.

She caused a whiff of ‘rich girl, poor guy’ scandal by marrying one of her back-up instrumentalists, Gido Kibukosya, but in Suzanne’s world, there are no straightforward fairy-tale endings. As her studio floundered, her marriage to Gido hit the rocks.

But Suzanne was rising as a force in the world of music again, and her crowning glory was to be the ‘My Kenya’ set performance during last Friday’s Constitution promulgation ceremony. Alas — Suzanne and her musical gang thoroughly fluffed their lines.

P. Diddy

It has always been said that he is the man who killed hip-hop. Back then, hip-hop was very literate and topic driven. It was slowly getting into messages of hyper-machismo, lechery, violence, and it’s Diddy who introduced and perpetuated crass materialism. The massacre of hip-hop was under the direction of Sean Combs, better known as Puff Daddy; his charismatic style and now fame, turned hip-hop into an empty vessel gutted with sexual overtones, gyrating hips.

For an average rapper, his strength has been in marketing. He can compose a song about peanut butter and make it a hit. He does not find any difficulty in finding a word to rhyme with titty! But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for the Bad Boy top

Signing Christopher Wallace aka Notorious B.I.G, Diddy hit the jackpot and soon became a household name. But BIG’s death in 1996 set him back to square one. He succeeded briefly in fitting Mase in BIG’s big shoes, but BIG’s boots were too big. Bad Boy suffered another setback when Mase ‘saw the light’ of fundamental Christianity, and quit rap altogether. This led to an economical decline for Diddy who had by then acquired a mogul’s expensive habits. He was to ‘struggle’ the next ten years until he found some success with Danity Kane and Young Joc. The hits from the all girl group and Young Joc must have been Godsend sign that Diddy wasn’t going to die anything other than a very rich man. Ever a hustler, Diddy used the opportunity to record the Pussy Cat Dolls, as well as release his album, Press Play in 2008. Now that Jay Z and Eminem are emperors of the rap world, we wait with bated breath to see what Sean Combs will come up with.

Coolio

Way back when sagging trousers were cool, Coolio made it cooler by tying his belt just above his knees. His 1994 single, Fantastic Voyage, was the coolest rap record around. He even became more famous with his 1995 Gangsta Paradise single, which was the soundtrack to the film, Dangerous Mind. He then went into a small lull but

In February last year, Coolio did a stage dive while performing at a college show. And like the Red Sea before Moses, everybody parted and he hit the ground hard. Nobody caught him. As he lay on the ground, people stole his chains and his clothes. As described by the Press, "he nearly flattened one poor girl". Then all the students decided to pounce on him.

They grabbed whatever they could, including his trainers, watch, chains and glasses. The bouncers pulled him back on stage. At least they got his shoes back for him. Poor Coolio.

Bamzigi

There are many ways to assess a celebrity’s star power, but counting the number of times he has made a comeback is a pretty good way. When Bamzi split from Necessary Noize, everybody wrote him off. But he quickly made a comeback under Gichboy. He even dropped two hot singles that quickly rose to the charts, and voila, Bamzi was on his way to the top.

He got a radio job and the African Superman, as he calls himself, was every artiste’s envy. But fame and success is accompanied by many elements, drugs saw Bamzigi zig-zag his way out of work and his music career all too. Exchanging the studio for a room in a rehab, Bamzi went into the real underground — where life is dark and bleak. Thank goodness he was successfully able to drop the bad habit, faster than a man drops a girl who gave him a dose of crap. Bamzi has mended his ways, but the big question is, will he make a successful comeback, or fall off the wagon, and relapse?

Mr Nice

This is one ‘has been celebrity’ who has nine lives, not musically, but literally. He has been beaten, and in the process bitten, so many times that we have lost count. He burst into the limelight, like a Roman gladiator carrying a torch of fire, he set dance floors alight. Striding across the East Africa region, putting a smile into many a girl’s face in all imaginable ways possible, keeping car sales men happy and busy with his show-bizzy ways.

Fagilia, Kidali Po, Mama, Kikulacho and First Lady, all from his album Rafiki were competing with each other in the charts — leaving only four places for other people’s Top Tens.

However, as Mr Nice’s unreliable behaviour, car accidents and alcoholism problems were making the headlines, so was his music career hitting a low point. His performances were getting highly criticised, as he immersed himself into life of fulltime partying down in South Africa. His conduct was so ludicrous that he elicited a creative compilation of Mac-Muga, a mocking song directed at him.

Now out of pocket, Mr Nice is back in the studio.

Chameleone, Uganda’s biggest star, is reported to have curtain-raised for Mr Nice when he came to Uganda – no doubt out of regional-brother sympathy, like the one Kibaki showed Omar el Bashir of the Sudan last week (never mind that ‘Brother’ Omar was so nervous about his hop to Kenya, he skipped lunch, and jumped back to Khartoum).

Mr Nice’s re-emergence is highly unlikely as kuku kupanda baiskeli. It might well be said here that Chameleone, alongside fellow countryman Bebe Cool, are cool cats living hot lives – nine lives on the knife-edges.

What with falling out of hotel windows, separations, beatings, police shootings...