It was his father. He made all of this possible, unknowingly. His father was in the army, posted out in Tororo, a border town far from Kampala. He would often cross into Kenya and because Kenya was always ahead of Uganda in pop culture, he would come back home with a VCD. “That was my first time to see one, this was in 2000 or earlier,” Felix says. “There was the movie Rush Hour with the funny men, Jennifer Lopez, Monica, Notorious BIG, Tupac. I started consuming all this new music from across the border and this sparked something in my mind that would not turn into a fire until later in university.”

His dad continued crossing the border and bringing back all these treasures and ideas. “But he was also a curious and experimental fellow because when DSTV came along he installed it even though he wasn’t sure what content was in there.” He continues. “From there I watched the latest songs on MTV, burnt them on CD, took them to school, and sold them. I was already doing content licensing and distribution before I knew what that was.”

One time his father heard about this thing called a computer, this thing that you plug into this other thing called the internet. “He didn’t know what that was but he bought it and brought it home.” He started messing around with the computer and the internet. Then his father brought a camera home because he felt we should take many family photos. That experience would set him on a path to setting up a production company that produces content. “So, you see my father, unbeknownst to him, was grooming me.” He says. “He was nudging me in a particular direction.”

At university where he was studying computer science he became passionate about Ugandan Hip Hop and the urban culture that eclipsed it. During a boring lecture, he started a blog and started writing about the hip-hop industry. The blog was dedicated to Uganda hip hop culture “I’d do reviews, interviews, and cover events.” A community of hip-hop lovers sprouted around the blog and in 2016 he felt it was time to monetize it, “the quickest way was to come up with the Ugandan Hip-hop awards.” It floundered and struggled until a big sponsor, MTN Uganda came through and gave it a lifeline, sponsoring the first event. This gave it credibility and visibility, but then a different question of sustenance came up. “At that moment I met a gentleman called Isaac Molindwa the founder of Pearl of Africa Music Awards, the first awards in our country. He took one look at me and was like, yeah, I know people think you make money from this thing, but I know you're not making money. But my advice to you is to build a spin-off of that.” The spinoff was a marketing activation company called The Tribe UG which later was rebranded to Skyline Media and Management Limited. “We have snowballed and are now running a media company that is built on hip hop culture, and is offering different services like content creation, content licensing, production of podcasts, of TVCs, of adverts, and things like that.”

HEVA Fund has been part of their growth. After a regional call for investment applications Skyline Media successfully accessed a  loan of 35,000 USD. “HEVA came at a time when we had been set back by the pandemic and we were only recovering.” He says. “ When artists couldn't perform anymore, the only thing that sustained them was streaming revenue for their content which we previously had been licensing. This was licensing content for artists. We realised that content was the future and it needed investing in.” The fund went into the procurement of equipment for content production. “Immediately that cut most costs by half and then increased our revenue because now we are coming from a position of creating our content.” The fund also helped them expand their reach. They got to meet the other creatives that HEVA supported. “In November 2023 I was part of a HEVA-organised seminar for African creatives where I met 27 people from different countries in Africa who are doing what we are doing. The networking was very impactful. The mind-shift has been immense.”

Skyline Media is now  in the process of engaging in IP evaluation of all content they create. Content, he says, is the future for their company. After paying back their loan they intend to  set their sights on new financial ventures. 

In 2022 CNN interviewed Felix for their program Inside Africa. “My dad was confused, “ he laughs, “At first he was like, ‘those are fraudsters, not CNN. Why would CNN want to interview you?’ Slowly he has started seeing and respecting what I do because at the beginning he didn’t understand this obscure thing I was doing. It didn’t strike him as a real job.”