# i don t deserve all your awesome. # but truthfully, truthfully. we benefit from nigerian success, as nigerians do benefit from ghanaian success. # simple abc for your delight. # mmm, sake off. some young people now don t realise the collaborations - and work that has been- going on between ghanaian and nigerian artistsi for the last 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years. # palm wine for lunch and dinner for breakfast. nobody will understand i the importance of hiplife until afrobeat is the biggest music in the world. - we are almost there already. but without hiplife, - there would be no afrobeats. ghana had established that sound before nigerians really got into the stride of things. # like say tomorrow no dey. for them, 99 was like a watershed moment for them and, 99, ghanaians already had megastar hiplife artists. if you were to take the music that they were doing and compare it with what was happening in ghana, what you will find is that it was more like the pre hiplife american imitation s
which was reggie rockstone s tsoo boi and talking drums aden. # i m about the flow. # because he s rhymin with the 0. # once had a afro, - but not some cornrow. i had wasted a lot of money taking talking drums to america and thinking that in 1995, america was ready for a burna boy. # know my name is shabba. # but your purpose ain t no rankin . they were rapping but they were wearing these batakaris. 30 years ago, they were considered to be very primitive, traditional clothes. but i went to atlantic in 1995 with talking drums. i shouldn t have done, cos i met record executive executives who couldn t even conceive that there was hip hop in africa, so it took till 2020 for an american label like atlantic to sign burna boy. # like say tomorrow no dey. by the late 2010s,
and all over the world, gave young people a voice. my generation, it gave us a voice from africa. initially, it was just in accra, then it was ghana, then it went west africa. now, it s global, through nigeria and ghana. we have artists featuring with beyonce, featuring withjustin bieber. ultimately, i believe as a musical genre, it gave a generation a voice and continues to do that. and this voice has and is slowly changing the perception of this continent. hiplife is identity to us. # i bathe in faith, not based with snakes. # a basic case of me and fake no dey relate. identity is very important. if you lose that identity there, then you don t know where you belong to. the mother is highlife but rap is africa. africa, africa.
some young people now don t realise lthe collaborations and work that has| been going on between ghanaian and nigerian artists for the last l 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years. # palm wine for lunch and dinner for breakfast. nobody will understand i the importance of hiplife until afrobeat is the biggest music in the world we are almost there already. but without hiplife, - there would be no afrobeats. ghana had established that sound before nigerians really got into the stride of things. # like say tomorrow no dey. for them, 99 was like a watershed moment for them and, 99, ghanaians already had megastar hiplife artists. if you were to take the music that they were doing and compare it with what was happening in ghana, what you will find is that it was more like the pre hiplife american imitation sort of music, and it didn t have an identity. but as time went on, they fused in the pidgin, the local language, just
to sign burna boy. # like say tomorrow no dey. by the late 2010s, afrobeats out of nigeria a hybrid of highlife and global beats had knocked hiplife off its pedestal. afrobeats became the catch all for west african pop. # you want a mr right, i m mr right now. hiplife is dead because the driving force of the music is the younger people, and the younger people do not identify with hiplife. i d be a fool to sit on bbc and say hiplife is dead. . no, hiplife is not dead. ghana and nigeria sibling rivals on everything from jollof rice to football dispute whether afrobeats was born out of hiplife. i get embarrassed when i see these unnecessary ghanaian resentment towards nigerians cos of their success. it s not a good look.