Friday Night Live: Irene on East Africa TV

On Friday 7 August 2026, Irene performed on national television. East Africa TV's Friday Night Live, the late show that airs Fridays at 22:00 East Africa Time, gave its second segment to the Wasichana Wanachana cypher, straight after a set by the rapper Stamina, and she was on the stage with the crew. She was billed, as on every release that year, as Miss Nasty; she became Irene in October.

The timing was tight. The Vol.2 video had premiered exactly one week earlier, on 31 July, and the collective had spent the year taking the cypher to broadcasters: Clouds FM's XXL in February, TBC 2 the same week, Crown TV's Vina Mezani in March, Mjini FM in June. Friday Night Live is the appearance where the collective's own post singled her out by name.

The posts that prove it

The collective announced the night that afternoon with a reel promising that FNL would be on fire from late evening, tagging her account; it drew 7,626 views. The next morning, 8 August, came the post that matters, on Instagram and TikTok at once: the collective wrote that it had been fire at East Africa TV, tagged her handle and said she had been dropping some hot lines. The Instagram version reached 24,400 views, 1,295 likes and 63 comments.

EATV streamed the whole programme live on YouTube under a title that paired Stamina with a line about the girls who tear it up covering Bongo hip hop. The stream runs 1 hour 29 minutes and 57 seconds and had 1,003 views by 5 October 2026; the cypher is the second segment, after Stamina.

Why it matters

Live television is the one stage a TikTok audience cannot give you. Irene had 422,300 followers on TikTok and the Uhakika freestyle had just been reposted by two news pages, but Friday Night Live put her in front of a national audience in real time, with a microphone and no edit. Twelve days later Nafasi came out with 20 Percent, and the live run and the single landed within the same fortnight.

Watch the Friday Night Live stream here, then open the Vol.2 release page, and visit the people page for Black X and the Wasichana Wanachana collective.