you were never told. # keep your eyes on the road. # africa represent. # africa s coming strong! # 0h, who s rockstone? # you know what i m saying? # who s rockstone? panafest 94 a pan african cultural festival aimed at bringing africans around the globe together would catapult hiplife. i felt panafest was, in many ways, the perfect opportunity for hiplife to go beyond accra. all of a sudden, it changed. it s like, hold on a second these kids have something. for the next two decades, hiplife acts dominated west african airwaves, reclaiming hip hop as african. there were some huge, huge sales made by hiplife artists like tic tac or obrafour or kenya. for the very first time, they became the songs that you d hear in the bars, the clubs everywhere. then, when i came to this country, i shot the very first hiplife videos,
another rap artist called freddie funkstone. i thought i was listening to rappers from brooklyn. so, immediately, igot up out of the table. i said, look, i don t have any discs, but i can make beats . 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.
is important to tell. # i don t walk around in the philippines. - # with the philistines. # m dot, in any vicinity, i fulfil a dream. - # no, i m not a rapper, l i m an ideas company. to understand the rising global 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 . # but that s all the boy really wanna hear. 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
if it s lost, - it won t bear fruit. we have. our heritage s been rooted in it. and it is something we can t let go of, cos it s part and parcel of us. i want hiplife to be that good story that lifted black folks in africa 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
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