Zimbabwe Hip-hop Awards have embarked on a rebranding exercise aimed at producing a different package at this year's edition. The organisers are holding a stakeholders meeting this Friday at Courtney Hotel in Harare to unveil this year's theme, new team and venue.

 The annual awards will be held in December this year.

The stakeholders meeting will see some of the top local hip hop gurus from musicians, producers, disc jockey, studio companies and writers coming together in a bid to make this year's edition bigger and better.

In an interview the new administrator for Zim Hip-hop Awards, Sean Campbell, said the awards are rebranding.

"All is in place for the meeting which will serve a purpose to rebrand the awards ceremony. We are launching the new birth of hip-hop. We have a new team which is now working with the founder of the awards show, Adrian, popularly known as Beefy. We are not taking over but we are working together. We want to bring sanity - the classy image - style not that there did not have it before but a lot of stories have been going around and we are just happy to be with them," he said.

Campbell said they have also involved gurus like Mau Mau and Fred Zindi among others.

"The awards ceremony is very big and like I said before we promising a lot of fireworks but this will be good if we have the pioneers in the music sector so we have their input. We have engaged gurus like Fred Zindi and Mau Mau among others so as to have a feel of genre in all ages," he said.

He said they are hosting a launch party next month with more than 100 musicians.

"We are hosting a launch party at Motor Action Sports Club on September 5, where we will have more than hundred hip-hop artistes from different parts of Zimbabwe like Mutare, Bulawayo, Masvingo, Harare, Gweru and Kariba. The party will give platform to the upcoming hip-hop musicians to exchange notes with the top dogs," he said.

Asked about the prize money for the awards he said they have engaged a local company to work with the help of South African award making firm to come up with the prizes.

"We won't change the gong style but just adding a little bit of flavour. So far a local company is giving us several designs of which we will choose the best but they are also working hand in hand with a South African company that I can't disclose now because of our contract but all I can share is they have designed some of the regional awards gongs," he said.