Flame Awards: Munah and Hirzi, favourite viral music video
It was a close fight.
When voting was first opened, singer Taufik Batisah was leading by a mile.
But at the last minute, votes surged in favour of YouTube darlings Hirzi Zulkiflie and Maimunah Bagharib, who were nominated for their hilarious Minahconda parody video of Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda.
The zany duo bagged the award with 172 votes, just 14 votes more than for Taufik’s #AwakKatMane.
Local rapper Shigga Shay garnered 71 votes for his music video for Lion City Kia.
What did Hirzi, 25, and Maimunah (better known as Munah), 26, have to say?
“Eh, why is there only one medal?”
Oops.
“Thank you to all our supporters. We didn’t expect to win this, we thought Taufik would win this. Funnily enough, we said we wanted to be nominated for Anugerah Planet Muzik. So I guess it’s a draw,” Hirzi said, jokingly.
Taufik had dominated the annual regional Malay music awards ceremony in October with three wins.
OUTRAGEOUS
Minahconda, their comeback video after Hirzi’s six-month stint in Los Angeles and a timely tie-in with their sixth anniversary, created a storm online for its outrageous and wacky song-and-dance routine about “a hungry minah”.
“We want to localise music parodies and still talk about things that are very relevant to Singaporeans. We realised that no one has branded themselves like that,” said Hirzi, who looks to American YouTube stars like Bart Baker and Miranda Sings for inspiration.
For Munah, the hype that followed the release of Minahconda in October came as a big surprise.
“People would tag us in photos and videos with the #Minahconda hashtag.
It was really fun to see,” she said.
It is the duo’s most successful music parody, with more than 555,430 views at press time.
The duo have also done parodies of Shake It Off by Taylor Swift and Bang Bang by Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj and Jessie J.
So what can we expect from them in 2015?
A similar “troll parody” of Problem by Ariana Grande and Iggy Azalea and continued hopes for their own reality show.
One thing’s for sure — you will see a lot more of their “minah” caricatures and alter egos Syasya and Kathee.
“2015 will be a ‘minah’ invasion (on our social media channels) all the way, no holds barred any more. It will probably be the most mature part of our journey, but no less fun,” said Hirzi.
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