Hype Ballo: Inside the charged-up nightlife career of DJ Joe Mfalme's hypeman, now a murder suspect

Hype Ballo, real name Allan Ochieng, was the one man who would always be seen around the celebrated DJ, hyping up his set, charging the crowd and lighting up the party.

Like most nightclub MCs in Kenya, Hype Ballo had been steadily building his brand across the nightlife industry, becoming a resonant voice in almost - if not all - of DJ Joe Mfalme's nightclub sets, even appearing alongside him on his weekly late-night show on NRG Radio.

Unlike some of the more recognisable faces and voices in the hyping world, Hype Ballo had not yet struck gold - he had been bubbling under for a while, and was definitely destined for greatness under the tutelage of his seasoned boss.

A perfunctory glance at his Instagram page, where he commands a decent 18k followers, shows a man who was devoutly dedicated to his nightlife craft - always sharing carousels of the previous night's happenings and upcoming appearances.

Almost all prominently feature the face of his boss, DJ Joe Mfalme, too.

So intertwined was the party duo that almost all of their Instagram posts are collaborations - a feature which allows one Instagram user to tag another effectively featuring the same content on each other's page.

It appears to be a relationship so interdependent, so interlaced. Hype Ballo seemed to not exist without the mention of the club heavyweight, DJ Joe Mfalme.

On the microphone, Ballo was a brutal beast - his powerful voice ricocheted off all the nightclub's four walls as he injected witty mastery and vocal brilliance in hyping the crowd, getting the revelers into the party mood and peppering Mfalme's sets with electrifying oral condiments.

Ballo's unmatched virtuosity can be witnessed in hundreds of reels found on his Instagram page - whether lighting up a reggae crowd or charging a Mugithi one, his mastery would instantly bring crowds to the dancefloor as drunken women teetered atop chairs, lost in the revelry.

He was, undeniably, the engine behind the Joe Mfalme juggernaut, the force which propelled the Mr. Sherehe parties and the dynamo which lit up fires in every club the duo played at.

From Kilimani to Kikuyu, Eldoret to Eldama Ravine, Mfalme always brought along his vocal genius - and if their online activities is anything to go by, the nights were almost always magical.

Before the recent fiasco, many Kenyans, especially those with little interest in clubbing and nightlife, did not know who Hype Ballo was - in fact, some media outlets erroneously referred to him as Mfalme's bouncer.

Now, his star appears to have been hijacked after he was retained as a suspect in the murder case of Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) officer Felix Kelian. 

In a ruling on Monday, the court stated that DJ Mfalme and five co-accused including three police officers shall be made state witnesses.

Hype Ballo, who was one of the accused in the assault of the detective, would now be a suspect in the murder. 

It is certainly a tragedy he never saw coming; a catastrophe he would never have imagined in a thousand years.

And as the matter now takes a different legal trajectory, one thing is for sure - the show must go on.