From Blakk to Barack

Whether doing his job on the Accra-based Hitz FM radio station or engaging in his hobby of making reggea music, Blakk Rasta touches on any subject that catches his fancy and the latest issue blowing through his brain is Barack Obama’s candidacy for the Democratic nomination in this year’s U.S. presidential election.

Blakk Rasta is working on a follow-up to last year’s Natty Bongo album but a single about Obama from the yet to be released Thunderstrike collection is already causing stirs in several circles.

In four and a half minutes on the track aptly titled Barack Obama, Blakk Rasta plainly states his fears about Obama’s safety, talks down the insincerity and wickedness of the American system and then pops up the dilemma facing Obama as an African-American running for the highest public office in the United States of America.

“We are black people and we cannot hate ourselves and love another kind,” Blakk Rasta said to Showbiz. There has been so much discrimination against black people in America and other places. Anytime a black person gets up to do something good, he either gets killed or pushed away in order not to realise the dream. Obama needs our support, in whichever form, to reach his declared destination of becoming President of America.”

Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. was born to a Kenyan father and an American mother on August 4, 1961. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, he is a Senator from Illinois and seeking to be the Democratic candidate in the upcoming United States presidential election.

Since announcing his presidential campaign in February 2007, Obama has stressed ending the Iraq War while maintaining a strong defence abroad, increasing energy independence and providing universal health care as major priorities.

He has written two bestselling books: a memoir of his youth titled Dreams from My Father, and The Audacity of Hope, a personal commentary on U.S. politics.

Blakk Rasta says the single, recorded by Zapp Mallet and which has root, dancehall, crunk and dub versions, is his widow’s mite to the Illinois senator’s campaign. “A Copy of the song has been sent to his campaign team and I hope they will carefully listen to the words in it.”

The song itself is a jumpy one-drop reggae piece with some clean-sounding I-Threes style of backing vocals.

Blakk Rasta rattles his concerns about Obama, America and Africa in Jamaican patois and rhymes beautifully in some sections: Too long they disrespect blacks and Africans combine. And black people flesh and blood the Ku Klux Klan love to dine.

Watch out Barack Obama and intensify your power turbine. Or else brethren Obama, your dark days will never sublime.

Being provocative is nothing new to Blakk Rasta. He does that daily on Hitz FM but the Barack Obama song is without doubt, his most inciting piece of work to date.

Obama not saying anything about Africa in his campagin does not worry Blakk Rasta. He believes the man would do what is possible for Africa and would not leave the continent in the lurch if he becomes President of the United States of America.

Such a move from Obama, Blakk Rasta says, will definitely earn him another jumpy, one-drop reggae song.

Story by Kouame Koulibaly