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!

CMB Prezzo

His relationships too have been tumultuous, especially after Nikki canned him. In the same month, Prezzo was declared one of the ‘top 100’ influential Kenyans, he was ironically getting served karatasis as a respondent in a divorce case, amidst other scandals.

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.

Suzanne Gachukia

But Suzanne, not one to stay stranded on desert islands, quickly got a catch in a certain TV anchor. This relationship too got disconnected!

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

Coolio

bounced back in 1997 with C U When You Get There. Ever since, Coolio has appeared more times in a courtroom than in a stage performance. Though he has tried countless times to make a comeback, it seems Lady Hip-hop continues to snub him.

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.

Mr Nice

Mr Nice later relocated to South Africa, and at $4,000 (Sh300, 000 then) per show, was the highest paid entertainer in East Africa. He travelled with five beauty queen dancers who were massively showcased in his music videos on East Africa Television (EATv).

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...