Ghanaian legendary rapper and hiplife artiste, Okyeame Kwame has expressed his disappointment in the current state of the hiplife genre in Ghana.
For the ‘Yeeko’ hitmaker, he admits that hiplife is in a coma and he takes the blame for not proactively ensuring the successful pass on of the genre to the next generation.
In his interview on Starr Chat with Bola Ray on Tuesday, he said: “I think that for every genre to be able to stay alive, there must be a group of young people who are interested in carrying the torch to the next young generation and for hiplife we don’t have that.”
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Okyeame Kwame later added that he believes he has failed the younger generation of hiplife artistes.
“People like myself have failed the young generation completely, because when I took on the mantle of hiplife in 1996, the last thing I knew was anthropology, sociology or marketing. I didn’t know I was supposed to carry this thing upfront and give it to someone else,” he noted.
He went on to compare the success of the hiplife genre in the Western world to that of Ghana, stressing that enough has not been done to uphold the genre in Ghana.
“This thing we’re doing, this is not how it’s done. Big Daddy Kane will carry to a point and give it to Jay Z, Jay Z will give it to another person, another person will give it to Kanye, that is how we keep it moving,” he said.
By: Cyril Senason Anani