Hip life

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hip life music is an originally Ghanaian fusion of highlife and hip hop music. The style is most popular in Ghana, especially the capital city of Accra, and among Ghanaians and other West Africans abroad, especially the United Kingdom, United States, Netherlands and Germany.

The history of Ghanaian hip hop goes back to the 1980s, when performers like K. K. Kabobo and Gyedu Blay Ambolley found a small audience performing Highlife variations with fast spoken, poetic lyrics. With time, Ghanaians became influenced by American and British hip hop, Reggae, and Highlife bands like the Ramblers and others. Hip-life first started out in the early 1990s by a rapper named Reggie Rockstone. However, in several radio interviews in 2004, Reggie Rockstone himself stated that he does not perform hip-life. Other Ghanian rappers like Lord Kenya, Da Multy Crew, The Native Funk Lords, and other rap groups continued the trend of hip-life music which is now one of the most popular forms of music in Ghana. Among the most popular hip life musicians are Tic Tac, the three person Vision in Progress (VIP) and Batman Samini, who won a MOBO award for his contribution to Hip-Life in 2006. Since the rise of these popular musicians, hip life has grown steadily more popular abroad, especially in London, where African nightclubs have helped to popularize the genre.