Hip-Hop Speaks, Hip-Life Answers: Global African Music
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2011
Publisher
Africa World Press
Abstract
This chapter makes a seminal contribution to the study of African Hip-Hop in Ghana, West Africa. It engages with Hip-Hop historiography while offering a first hand account of the origins and social dynamics that birthed Hip-Life. It is also an examination of the distinctive evolution of Hip-Life, as a peculiar genre of Hip-Hop from Ghana, noting irs specific influences by different individuals and musical genres in the U.S. and Ghana. It highlights the trans-Atlantic career of Reggie Rockstone, as the genre's Godfather. It is unique by its textual analysis of Hip-Life songs and identification of continuities and changes in content, verbal stylistics, and culture from preceding musical genres.
Chapter of
Native Tongues: The African Hip-Hop Reader
Editor
Paul Saucier
Recommended Citation
Odamtten, H.N.K. “Hip-Hop Speaks, Hip-Life Answers: Global African Music” in Native Tongues: The African Hip-Hop Reader, ed. Paul Saucier (Africa World Press, 2011), 147-176.
