Gotham streets, yeah. and a thing must evolve. the thing must evolve. for it to survive, the thing must evolve. wild cheering. # sh sh shut up and bend over. now, a new generation of artists raised on hiplife are writing its next chapter. kidi and kuami eugene are the fresh faces selling out international shows and captivating a global audience. i learned almost everything i knew from the streets. how to survive with no money in your pocket. there are a lot of songs made by hiplife artists that actually motivated me, kept pushing me to go. i could see people making ends meet from doing music, which is hiplife music. and i knew i had a space in there. # vibe. # die.
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. # 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.
Anything male dominated, you don t doubt it. raps. one of the oldest african - proverbs, which is sankofa there s something i beautiful in the past. if you think you can tl go forward without it, go back, pick it up, and take it with you into the future. . that is where we are now. in a moment in ghanaian music where we will need to revisit what that brilliant culture called hiplife that birthed a lot of what s happening now, to really reimagine it and see how we move forward. # sista, sista, damn i miss ya. # i m gone till november, i ll be back to getcha. we had a sankofa moment with hiplife. # can i count on you too? # i m begging you. # let me fly free and make some revenue. # if i chop, you go chop some too. # 12 months pregnant, this idea is long overdue. hiplife s place in the future of global music may come down to who it lets in, what it holds on to, and whether it can evolve.
We left the club, like, 4:00 in the morning, we got to the recording studio at like 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning. then, like, a few hours later, everything started clicking. rab was very much like reggie as well two peas in a pod. i unfortunately, he passed away. but yeah, rab was reggie s partner in music for a long time. the two ghanaians, raised in the west, mixed hip hop with highlife, and hiplife was born. i looked like the folks that they had seen on mtv. i had the short dreads, the wife beater, the tims, the camouflage. but then, when i rapped, it was in twi. and that thatjust blew everybody s mind. raps in twi. twi being one of the biggest local languages, it was unique in a sense that nobody had attempted to put rap together in that context before.
Influence of african music, you have to understand the story of hiplife. keep your eyes on the road by reggie rockstone plays. when i did what i did, i tagged it. so, when a dude put a piece of meat between two bread and he called it a burger, he named it. and that s what i did. i named it hiplife . hiplife music is a conversation between ghana s past. shordy by praye plays. akasieni by lord kenya plays. ..and its present. bunker by kidi plays. mind your business by eno baroni plays. this is the story of a music genre that birthed a global movement. but before hiplife, there was highlife. highlife music plays.