with images and sounds of gangsta rap (Sommers 2003; Beah 2007). Armed with the lightweight, easy-to-use AK-47s, they were numb and ready to kill.
Elsewhere in Africa it would often be middle- and upper-class Africans who, with access to the appropriate equipment, formed the first rap crews. By the late 1980s African emcees grabbed the mic and began to transform hip-hop. Groups like Prophets of da City (POC) and Black Noise emerged to help pioneer hip-hop culture in South Africa. Both groups would be influenced by the music of American hip-hop groups like Public Enemy, X-Clan, and NWA as they told their own stories of life in apartheid South Africa (Ariefdien and Burgess 2011).
In West Africa the Senegalese group Positive Black Soul (PBS) emerged to help usher in hip-hop culture in that country. Along with rapper MC Solaar, PBS greatly influenced the emergence of hip-hop culture in Senegal. MC Solaar would go on to become one of the first African emcees to do a song with a major American hip-hop artist when he recorded “Le Bien, Le Mal” with Guru in 1993. Eric Charry provides a detailed account of hip-hop’s arrival in West Africa via Europe. Charry is especially thorough in detailing hip-hop’s history among francophone Africans. An important element in the growth of hip-hop in Senegal, for example, has been the migration of Senegalese immigrants into both New York and Paris, which would become important routes for hip-hop exchanges (Charry 2012).
The emergence of hip-hop culture varied all over the continent, but by the early 1990s several countries in Africa had flourishing hip-hop communities. In East Africa, groups Kwanza Unit and the De-Plow-Matz, and artist 2 Proud (now Sugu), were integral to the growth of hip-hop in Tanzania in the early 1990s. A photo (fig. 1.3) shows Kwanza Unit founding member Zavara Mponjika (aka Rhymson) in his old neighborhood of Temeke in Dar es Salaam. In Kenya, hip-hop artist Hardstone and the group Kalamashaka were influential in the development of hip-hop in that country. In West Africa, Reggie Rockstone and the group Talking Drums helped transform Ghanaian hip-hop, with artists performing in both English, Pidgin English, and various Ghanaian languages. Reggie Rockstone and Talking Drums also helped usher in hiplife, which came to incorporate various styles of music. There are hip-hop emcees, reggae musicians, and R&B singers who perform hiplife music.
Figure 1.3. Zavara Mponjika, aka MC Rhymson, of the group Kwanza Unit in the Temeke district of Dar es Salaam in 2010. Photo by author.
These early pioneers of hip-hop in Africa helped transform the culture from an imitation of American hip-hop to something distinctly local. Some of these artists have stepped away from the spotlight and others are still active, while still others are transitioning into politics or organizing with NGOs to make a difference in social issues.
Hip-hop culture has five elements (the emcee, the DJ, graffiti, breakdancing, and knowledge of self). While the emcee has the largest visible presence in Africa, aspects of all the elements can be found in Africa. Knowledge of self as an element emerged last and is often cited only by serious hip-hop heads.3 For most serious hip-hop heads, “knowledge of self is considered to be the fifth element of hip-hop, which informs the other elements” (Haupt 2008, 144). Many of the early African artists were attracted to not just the sound of hip-hop but the words. It was the honesty, and the voice of resistance, that also appealed to African hip-hop artists. Some of these artists understood the fifth element and incorporated it into a holistic approach to hip-hop culture.
In political science the phrase “all politics is local” could be similarly applied to hip-hop. All hip-hop is local. Emcees represent their contemporary local realities. Hip-hop scenes in various cities have their own distinctive styles and sounds. While hip-hop in Los Angeles was largely influenced by the funk music scene and gang culture there, hip-hop in Dakar was influenced by the mbalax music scene and Senegalese Islamic culture in that city. Hip-hop in Africa is a representation of local African communities and is influenced by local experiences and cultures. Hip-hop communities emerged nationally with very few connections with communities beyond their borders, and connections between francophone, anglophone, and lusophone countries were almost nonexistent. Aware of developments in the US hip-hop scenes, hip-hop communities in Africa developed in local contexts, largely a product of the music, culture, and history of the communities within which the culture developed.
The lyrics of those early African emcees encompassed the emotions and experience of entire generations of youth. The result was that artists not only speak to their national audiences, but contributed to global hip-hop dialogues as well. The goal for many artists was not just to speak to their local audiences but to represent their Africa to the world. For example, Senegalese rap pioneers Positive Black Soul (PBS) released their song “Africa” because they wanted to show the world “what Africa really is” (Appert 2016, 286).
African hip-hop artists also brought about conscious connections between hip-hop and African styles of rhyming and poetry, such as tassou (Senegal), maanso (Somalia), ushairi (Tanzania), that have existed for centuries in African cultures. K’naan, for example, has often reminded his listeners that Somalia is known as a nation of poets. Peter S. Scholtes quotes Senegalese hip-hop artist Faada Freddy: “Tassou still exists in Senegal . . . That’s an ancient form of rap music.” (2006, par. 4).
The process of indigenizing hip-hop culture was helped when many emcees began rapping in local languages. In countries like Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda artists manipulated local languages and dialects and moved from producing English-only rap to also rapping in local languages. The importance of language use in hip-hop is crucial to understanding whom music speaks to, where an artist is coming from (Pennycook 2007; L. Watkins 2012). The language spoken by the masses has historically been assigned a low status (Devonish 1986). In fact, postcolonial policies to maintain colonial languages as official languages in much of Africa perpetuated the language inequality that developed, and the lower-class status assigned to the languages of the masses (Devonish 1986; Fanon 2004; Thiong’o 1986). Hip-hop’s roots, however, are with the masses, with those very individuals whom society has assigned a low status. The languages utilized by hip-hop artists was taken from the language spoken on the streets, by the masses. The slang used in hip-hop has the characteristics of other spoken languages, in that it is constantly changing, and an in-group status is also assigned to those who are fluent in it. As a result of hip-hop’s influence and popularity, in some countries hip-hop culture has promoted the status of indigenous and creole languages (and cultures) among the youth. In Ghana, for example, Pidgin English is assigned a low status but hip-hop artists have played a role in promoting its use among the youth. In response to the status of Pidgin English and street culture, Ghanaian artists Wanlov the Kubolor and M.anifest team up on the song “Gentleman” and proclaim, “I no be gentleman at all’o / I be African man original.” Through the song the duo uses Pidgin English to assert a specific kind of Ghanaian identity, one that is rooted in the masses.
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“Understand Where I’m Coming From”
The Growth of African Hip-Hop and Representations of African Culture
Hip Hop. This isn’t a hobby to me. This isn’t something I just decided to try [to] do. I’ve been doing this my whole life. This is my life. It’s in my DNA. Remember that.
—Gigi LaMayne, Tumblr post, January 7, 2016
HIP-HOP COMMUNITIES IN Africa emerged in the 1980s and 1990s and did not simply reflect what was happening on the ground but also constructed for us the realities for many urban youth in Africa. They also informed the youth and put their conditions into context, translating political speak into street language, and sometimes they provided instructions on confrontations with social and political institutions. By the mid-1990s
