By Dennis Asiimwe
Back then she used two names – so Sheebah Karungi has certainly come a long way.
If you look at the video, she even looks shorter than she is now.
This version of bubble gum pop was actually a good idea, window dressed as a dancehall track. It fit her mostly irreverent nature, and with a deliciously colourful video, was probably her first hit.
Its simple, sing-along structure fit in perfectly – the kids and housemaids, who form an essential core of Kampala’s music industry market, loved it.
Ice Cream can be referred to as the song that sort of announced Sheebah’s renaissance because she never looked back from that point. It may also have been the point where she started to believe that a music career just might work, after all.
Her strut was more confident after Ice Cream, and she was markedly sassier. But Ice Cream was also a coming of age song, because she left behind that flirty, ‘little girl’ performance.
Her follow up hits have shown her ‘hard-as-nails’ demeanor, but it would be kinda cute if Sheebah showed us the little girl that brought us Ice Cream again. There’s a boundless optimism about that single that she has not really captured in any of her more recent music.
She’s almost playfully petulant on the song, which is performed in Luganda, and has outright lines where she says “I want ice cream”, like a six-year-old.
Heck she even sings “Even if you build me a flat, you have done nothing if you haven’t gotten me ice cream.” Sheesh! Possibly her most melodramatic song.
