Full Circle: A survey of Hip Hop in Ghana
By Ayana Vellissia Jackson

While Hip Hop’s popular origins are attributed to New York, it is a culture with roots firmly planted in Africa. Would there be Hip Hop without the drum? Would live interactive stage performances exist without the call and response that’s been a staple in African music since time immemorial? It cannot be disputed that Hip Hop is among Mother Africa’s many children, thus it is not surprising, especially in the current stages of globalization, that youth on the continent are using Hip Hop as a vehicle for their own expression: infusing their perspective and cultural elements into Hip Hop, thereby contributing to the larger art form’s evolution.

Since its inception, Hip Hop’s given young kids an opportunity to voice their worldviews through creative expression. From the Sugar Hill Gang to Public Enemy, from Jay-Z to Dead Prez, Hip Hop artists have documented their lives and shared them with youth worldwide. In Accra, Ghana, a Hip Hop hybrid has emerged: Hip Life.

Returning to their native homeland from abroad in the early 1990's, artists and producers like Panji Anoff of Pidgen Music, Reggie Rockstone, Freddie Funkstone, Zapp Mallet, Michael Cook, Michael "Coalhouse" Horthman, and Talking Drum brought with them an appreciation for American music. Similar to Hip Hop in rhyme patterns and the use of electronica, Hip Life strips American Hip Hop down to raw beats, infusing it with local rhythms like Adowa (A-do-wa), instruments such as Kpalogo (Kpa-lo go) drums, xylophones, and thumb pianos, samples of old High Life favorites like Alhaji Frimpong,Abrechieba Kofi Sammy, and A.B Crenstil, and vocal performances in local languages like Twi, Ewe, Housa and others.

Inspiring the pioneering effort of the early 80's, High Life artists like Gyedi Blay Ambolley had woven funk styles into traditional High Life tracks. It was soon after that a younger generation began satisfying the urge to bring Black American rap styles into the music by rhyming in local languages. Artists like Reggie RockStone, Talking Drum, and Cil Perswa, however, opted to utilize Ghanaian patois (pidgen English) as a way of reaching other African countries and even the American market.

Though artists like Mahoney Pee and others reportedly released Ghanaian language rap songs in Europe, particularly Amsterdam and Germany, the first commercial single to actually hit the Ghanaian airwaves was a song called "Tsoo Boi" Produced through a collaborative effort by Freddie Funkstone,
Michael Cook, and Zap Mallet and financed by Hip Life’s first investor, the late honorable Ricci Ossei, for his son Reggie "Rockstone" Ossei, it was in this song that the term "Hip-Life" first appeared. For that reason Reggie is widely referred to as the Father of Hip Life, whose single was the impetus for the emergence of the Hip Life style.

The following year Reggie released Hip Life’s first commercial album "Maaka Maka (If I said so I said it) after connecting with Michael "Coalhouse" Horthman, a Ghanaian producer from the British scene. Their album was followed by Me na ne Kae (It was I who said it) and Meka (I’ll say it). Through American distribution, Reggie’s Hip Life efforts were exposed to an international market, eventually finding him featured in The Source Magazine (March 2001). The nascency of Hip Life had begun to provide amplification to the voice of Ghanaian youth, a voice fueled as much by local High Life music as it was by American Hip Hop.

In many ways, however, Hip Life began as a counter-force to U.S. borne Hip Hop that had taken over Ghanaian airwave: Ghanaian youth were being bombarded with images and sounds from the west. While attracted to the rhythms and styles of the artists, there was little understanding of any lyrical content outside of catchy hooks. "You can play Jay-Z in a club and it’s live, but you know, people don’t understand it. But Hip Life everybody understands," says Nathaniel Jonah, owner of His Majesty’s nightclub.

"People didn’t used to listen to Ghanaian music in the club, it was a bit dull, it wasn’t night club kind of music. But now there’re a lot more up-tempo beats in the songs. You’ll have like an hour, sometimes even two hours of Hip Life in a night club and every body’s on the dancefloor and the place pumps," Says Kiki, co-owner of Accra’s hotspot, Boomerang.

Like all music that rises from younger generations, Hip Life has been met with a backlash. Elder generation artists and traditionalists refer to Hip Life as rebellious. The popular criticism is that if you create Hip Life you’re a Yo! Yo!. "Yo! Yo! means American stuff…Hip Hop kind of attitude. You watch too much Black movies like Menace to Society, Belly, and Juice," says Cil Perswa a member of early Hip Life group NFL, "That’s why old folks don’t like Hip Life. [They say] It’s too much violence." Perswa claims most criticism targeting Hip Life is highlighted by the belief that the new genre is too radical a departure from traditional African culture. "[But] When you listen to Hip-Life you can feel the African flavor in it," says Perswa, "Africans, you know, we have our way of using the horns, the horns you hear and the beat, but it is just that rapping is going on. You know our people in Africa, they think we are doing the American way up here. It’s not that. I believe Hip Hop is Africa, so everything Black is about Africa. That’s it."

Hip Lifer Lord Kenya agrees. "I’m a true African boy who knows how to make an African out of the computer," he says. "That’s what my music’s about. I wouldn’t say I’ve been influenced by Hip Hop because we have structures here in Ghana. To me what I’m doing is not something I borrowed. I am doing something indigenous. Everybody samples. At the end of the day I listen to Busta Rhymes’s [Put Ya Hands Where My Eyes Can See] and I know it’s indigenous African music. It’s evolution."

In this evolution, the space dividing the youth of the world contracts in accordance to the continual expansion of accessible information via the Internet. Further, globalization not only affects the economies within the world market, it also contributes to the formation of a "world culture" in which a teenager from the Bronx, New York, cannot be distinguished from a teenager from Nima, Accra. Whether it be the Internet, traditional media or youth targeted media such as MTV that is responsible for this relativity, its presence and affects are evident: Hip Hop culture is among the strongest of ties that bind youth.

"I honestly believe that these days Ghanaians see Hip Hop to be American, and in many ways it is," says Panji Anoff. "But we identify so readily with it because Hip Hop culture is African culture. It is the culture of looking at your environment from a higher level. That’s really what it is and that is truly the African concept of art."

While we are unable to ignore globalization’s arguably unstoppable affects, in particular concerning its affects on the development of Hip Life, it is evident that youth around the world are being influenced by many of the same cultural elements. As they appropriate those elements, they put their own special marks on each. In Ghana, Hip Life manifests this process.