Hip-Hop in Africa. Msia Kibona Clark
enslaved Blacks into West Africa from the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. In Ghana and Nigeria, the African American and Caribbean contribution to highlife dates back to the early 1900s (Shipley 2009; Shonekan 2012). In the Congo, and later in Senegal, Cuban music became very influential and popular (Shain 2002; White 2002). In the 1930s Cuba’s rumba music was a major influence on the emergence of Congolese dance music, which would become popular across Africa (White 2002).
The music that emerged from African American and Caribbean communities in the 1960s through the 1980s would also find its way to Africa. The music from artists ranging from James Brown to Michael Jackson to Bob Marley would be a precursor to the wave of hip-hop music and culture that would impact the lives of many African youth in the 1980s and 1990s.
In addition to the legacy of retained African culture in African American and Caribbean music, twentieth-century African musical influences could also be heard in the music of the African diaspora in the United States. African musicians like Fela Kuti, Miriam Makeba, Lucky Dube, and Hugh Masekela became well known in the African diaspora in the United States. Many of these artists lived in America during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s and became involved in the civil rights and Black Power movements. This was especially the case of exiled South African artists like Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba. Makeba would eventually marry Black Power activist Kwame Toure (aka Stokely Carmichael). Fela Kuti was very vocal about his exposure to the Black Power movement of 1960s Los Angeles and its influence on his music. Fela Kuti would also influence the Black music scene in America.
As hip-hop grew in America, several artists would sample beats or vocal tracks from Africa. Afrobeat musician Fela Kuti is perhaps one of the most sampled African musicians in American hip-hop. A selection of some of the many artists to sample his music: Mos Def sampled “Fear Not of Man” for his song of the same name (D. Smith 1999); Missy Elliott sampled “Colonial Mentality” for “Watcha Gon’ Do” (2001); Nas sampled “Na Poi” for “Warrior Song” (M.anifest 2012); the Roots sampled “Mr Grammarticalogylisationalism Is the Boss” for “I Will Not Apologize” (Trotter 2008); and J. Cole sampled “Gentleman” for “Let Nas Down” (2013). African American hip-hop artists Jay Z and Will Smith teamed up to produce the musical Fela!, which opened on Broadway in 2009.
The bridging of the gap across the Atlantic divide, between the United States and Africa, through hip-hop, has not been frequent, but the occurrences have been significant. There have been a number of collaborations between African and African American emcees. Much of this is due to the numbers of African emcees that migrated to the United States. In addition, several African American emcees are connecting with African artists in Africa. Collaborations between K’naan and Mos Def (“America,” 2009), Wale and Pharrell Williams (“Let It Loose,” 2009), M-1 and DJ Awadi (“The Roots,” 2010), and Blitz the Ambassador and Chuck D (“The Oracle,” 2011) have involved African and African American emcees on various projects. In fact, M-1 of the American hip-hop duo Dead Prez has been in two documentaries on hip-hop in Africa: Ni wakati and United States of Africa: Beyond Hip Hop.
Collaborations between African emcees from various parts of the continent have also led to linkages among urban youth across Africa. Early collaborations include, in 2000, the release of “Da Noize” by Kenya’s Nazizi and Mizchif from Zimbabwe. With improvements in communications and technology we have increasingly seen more collaboration. In 2009, ProVerb (South Africa) and ModeNine (Nigeria) released “ProMode,” Hip Hop Pantsula (HHP) (South Africa) and Naeto C (Nigeria) released “Boogie Down,” HHP and Nazizi released “Daraja” (Künzler 2011b), and Professor Jay (Tanzania) and Kwaw Kese (Ghana) released “Who Be You.”
In 2010, M.anifest (Ghana) and Krukid (Uganda) teamed up for a project entitled the African Rebel Movement and collaborated on the album Two Africans and a Jew. In that same year, Senegal’s DJ Awadi traveled to thirteen African countries for his Présidents d’Afrique project. The project produced an album and the documentary United States of Africa: Beyond Hip Hop. The album features collaborations between hip-hop artists from different African countries, like “La patrie ou la mort” with Smockey of Burkina Faso, “Amandla” with Skwatta Kamp of South Africa, and “Uhuru” with Maji Maji of Kenya. Also in 2010, Dominant 1 (Malawi), the Holstar (Zambia), and Illuminate (Zimbabwe) released “Don’t Stop Playing,” and the Holstar and ProVerb released “Stepping Stone.”
In 2011, ProVerb and Naeto C released “Higher,” and Navio (Uganda) and Jua Cali (Kenya) released “Respect.” In 2013, M.anifest and Camp Mulla (Kenya) released “All In,” and Gigi LaMayne (South Africa), Sasa Klaas (Botswana), Devour Ke Lenyora (South Africa), Ru the Rapper (Namibia), and DJ Naida (Zimbabwe) released “No Sleep.” In 2014, M.anifest and Proverb released “Proverbs Manifest,” M.I. (Nigeria) and Sarkodie (Ghana) released “Millionaira Champagne,” Sarkodie and Vector tha Viper (Nigeria) released “Rap Attack,” and Khaligraph Jones (Kenya), Dominant 1 (Malawi), the Holstar (Zambia), and Raiza Biza (Rwanda) released “Fecko: Real African Poetry 2.0.”
Defining African Hip-Hop
As the growth, influence, and content of hip-hop culture throughout Africa is being studied, so are attempts to define it. In the numerous interviews and conversations for this project, it became clear that several different positions were emerging on the topic. Most interviewees were asked to define African hip-hop, and the answers varied.
Some deny that hip-hop can be African, arguing that hip-hop is not an African music form, so all African hip-hop artists are just imitating American culture. Lliane Loots’s (2003) piece on American hip-hop in South Africa claims that the impact of American hip-hop on Africans is negative. Loots (2003) compares the influence of hiphop on Africans to Frantz Fanon’s idea of cultural colonialism. This perspective deletes hip-hop’s African past as well as its links to traditional forms of rapping and storytelling that exist in many African languages and cultures. Fanon’s pivotal discussion of culture can be used to examine hip-hop in Africa (see chapter 3), but from the perspective of hip-hop as a tool for mobilization.
Some argue that hip-hop music is African only if artists are performing in local languages and over African rhythms. These arguments narrow the definition of hip-hop to simply a focus on music, ignoring the culture that surrounds African hip-hop. Hip-hop culture includes music but includes various other cultural elements. African hip-hop’s influence is found in new slang emerging from various urban centers in Africa, and in the graffiti that colors African cities and towns. In addition, this argument ignores the contributions of the African diaspora to African music, such as mbalax (Senegalese dance music), highlife (West African dance music), or Afrobeat (Nigerian dance music), all of which were heavily influenced by the US diaspora.
There are those who argue it is about location. A fundamental principle of hip-hop is the idea of representation, of representing where you are from, your reality. The “locationists” argue that unless one’s experience as an African emcee emanates from living in Africa, one cannot represent oneself as an African emcee. This perspective calls into question artists such as Nigerian American rapper Wale, disregarding whether or not Wale self-identifies as an African emcee. Wale’s music is not considered African because his experience is not based on living in Nigeria. Some would also discount Somali-born artist K’naan as an African emcee because his perspective may not represent life on the streets of Mogadishu today; he has spent more than twenty years away from Somalia. This definition robs the African emcee of the power to self-identify as an African emcee. The emcee’s representation of an African in the diaspora and all the identities and experiences that blend together is a representation of an African reality.
The past thirty years have seen dramatic increases in the African immigrant population in the United States. Between 1990 and 2000 the number of Africans living in the United States jumped from 200,000 to 800,000; by 2013 the African-born population in the United States was 1.8 million (Anderson 2015). In cities such as New York, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Houston, and Washington, DC, which have been primary destinations, the increase has been even more significant. In Europe, countries like France and England had large African populations decades before the increase in African immigration to the United States. All these