politically and socially conscious music. Songs like Prophets of da City’s “Ons stem” (Our voice, South Africa, 1991), Positive Black Soul’s “Le bourreau est noir” (The executioner is black, Senegal, 1995), Kalamashaka’s “Tafsiri hii” and “Ni wakati” (Translate this and It’s time, Kenya, 1997, 2001), Kwanza Unit’s “Msafiri” (Traveler, Tanzania, 1999), or Das Primeiro’s “Liberdade” (Liberty, Angola, 2002) all pointed out hypocrisies in government, resurrected the words of past revolutionary leaders through sampling, and connected urban youth in Africa to global hip-hop communities. Many of these early artists were of a generation that was either engaged in liberation struggles (southern Africa) or the children of those who had engaged in liberation struggles. In an interview with Kama of Kalamashaka, the artist understood his role as both an emcee and an activist and saw the role of the emcee as similar to the roles of other intellectuals. Kama’s grandparents were involved in the Mau Mau rebellion and he was himself politically educated but also rooted in hip-hop culture. During Kama’s visit to Los Angeles he easily rapped along with songs from US emcee Redman’s classic 1994 album Dare Iz a Darkside, engaged in substantive discussions of Mau Mau ideologies, and debated the ideas of Frances Cress Welsing.1 Kama was representative of other socially conscious hip-hop artists. Several artists interviewed articulated the role of the emcee as street intellectuals, and several saw political education as a necessary process.
In a historical review of the growth of hip-hop as a form of cultural representation in Africa, this chapter focuses on the economic and political events on the continent in the 1980s and 1990s that led to the development and politicization of hip-hop culture in Africa, as well as at the diverse hip-hop representations found in select countries of Africa. I also look at the ways in which individual artists have shaped hip-hop in Africa as well as how they have contributed (festivals, conferences, award shows) to the development of hip-hop in Africa. The chapter details the ways in which hip-hop emerged as a tool to represent social dissonance and presents hip-hop as a cultural representation beyond the music, specifically the use of graffiti, media (film, magazines, radio), and fashion as forms of cultural representations within hip-hop culture.
Artists all over Africa have used hip-hop as a framework or vehicle to create certain narratives. It is within these narratives that the listener is able to discern historical, political, social, and economic dynamics within certain societies. Chuck D’s famous quote that hiphop is “black America’s CN” has broader implications through a cultural studies framework (Thorpe, 1999). In cultural studies even the news is a cultural representation, containing the perspectives and ideologies of the individuals editing the news stories. In many ways the evening news also represents certain cultural systems, and one’s interpretation of the news is often shaped by one’s own cultural connections. Through hip-hop, as through the evening news, reality is constructed and a historical record is created. Though different audiences translate or interpret cultural representations differently, based on their own social and economic background, those representations, be they hip-hop or the evening news, are no less legitimate realities for many.
Hip-hop, as a form of cultural representation, expresses the feelings, ideas, and concepts of the culture within which the artist lives. Hip-hop, as all cultural representations, has the power to shape, educate, and change society. There are definite similarities seen in cultural representations produced through hip-hop music all over the African continent. These similarities include expressions of hip-hop’s core elements and culture and articulations of similar economic and political environments. Differences among representations in hip-hop in Africa come from the diverse environments that exist on the continent. These diverse environments are understood through an examination of hip-hop in various countries.
The chapter also deals with the ways in which African hip-hop artists produce and distribute music with the diversity of resources available to them. There are challenges and opportunities facing hip-hop artists in Africa, and the ways in which they are navigating those challenges and opportunities are important. African hip-hop artists have embraced new media and bypassed barriers imposed by mainstream or traditional media outlets. The internet has become a platform for videos, songs, lyrics, blogs, and articles written by hiphop artists and content creators in Africa. On platforms like iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, ReverbNation, SoundCloud, Vimeo, YouTube, and others, the numbers of African emcees making their music available online has increased multifold since 2009, when my research on hiphop in Africa began.
The chapter will finally explore the ways in which African hiphop heads are exploring and using nonmusical representations in African hip-hop culture. Hip-hop culture goes beyond the music and finds expression in other art forms. Graffiti and breakdancing developed early on in many African countries, along with the music. Some hip-hop emcees had their start as breakdancers or graffiti artists. Later, with changes in technology and communication, more hip-hop heads used new media and social media to express hip-hop culture through images, films, and magazines. Additionally, distinctly African hip-hop fashion has become increasingly visible. The use of local textiles, slang, and graphics in fashion has led to more artists looking to African-produced fashions, leading to a fan base following their lead and fashion designers inspired to keep up with the changes.
Hip-Hop as Cultural Representation
Music and other forms of cultural representation (art, literature, film, etc.) may not simply be reflections of reality but indeed how reality is constructed. The constructivist approach to cultural representation posits that our understandings of reality and the world around us, including our concepts of self and other, are based on various representations. Representations create reality for us and reinforce or challenge the realities constructed by previous representations. According to the constructivist approach to cultural representation, “it is the social actors who use the conceptual systems of their culture and the linguistic and other representational systems to construct meaning, to make the world meaningful and to communicate about that world meaningfully to others” (Hall 2013, 25). Therefore, when we associate Somalia with lawlessness and piracy, while simultaneously associating America with lawfulness and security, it is because of the representation we have been exposed to about both countries. When Somali-born hip-hop artist K’naan, based in Canada and the United States, presents a representation of Somalia that challenges what we “know,” his representations, especially when supported by further similar representations, can effectively impact our understanding of Somalia. Studies show that distorted media representations of Africa have often constructed in the minds of many in the West an image of an Africa plagued by disease, poverty, war, corruption, and famine (Schraeder and Endless 1998; Mengara 2001; Gallagher 2015). These representations are responsible for what Chimamanda Adichie (2009) referred to as the single story of Africa in her now-famous TED Talk. These representations have impacts on American and European foreign policy, on Western attitudes toward Africa and Africans, as well as on work done in Africa by NGOs and other international organizations.
This does not mean that all representations are interpreted in the same way. The realities constructed by one representation may be interpreted differently, depending on the cultural context from which the audience operates and their understanding of the cultural context from which the representation originates. A well-known example of the importance of understanding cultural context is the American The Wire, an iconic television series, especially within hip-hop culture. The story is told through the lens of an inner-city Black community in America in which hip-hop culture is firmly entrenched. The show challenged America’s assumptions about the inner city, the people who lived there, and the government officials who worked there, in a way that was uncomfortable (Chaddha and Wilson 2010; Mittell 2010). Assumptions about inner-city African Americans, as well the appropriateness of the behaviors of government officials, have largely been shaped by cultural representations found in mainstream TV, film, and news media. Like the hip-hop culture represented in the show, The Wire challenged those representations by presenting a counternarrative to audiences that had already bought into a single story of inner-city African Americans. Understanding the representations presented in The Wire did not require one to have lived the experiences of West Baltimore residents, but it did require one to question, and even set
