Ghana needs people of integrity and fairness in order to progress, rapper M.anifest has said.

Sharing his opinion on what he thought stood in the way of progress for Ghanaians, the God MC composer told Prince Benjamin, host of the Class Drive on Class91.3FM, on Wednesday September 14: “…I don’t think it’s one thing, but I think if there is one thing at this moment that we need more, its integrity and fairness.”

“…The more integrity you have, it will also lead to more fairness and if we treat each other with more fairness and more value, not trying to undercut each other, there is a lot that will go better because we will be more empathetic to each other as humans.”

The Someway Bi hit maker bemoaned the gap between popular culture and academia. To help bridge the gap, he said: “I’m looking forward to actually going into the halls of academia more and being able to share what we do, because you know, there is too much of a gap between popular culture, popular music, and academia but what we do is very influential and I’m not even saying it has to be studied but it has to be taken into account. You can’t talk about globalisation without talking about music trends. We can’t talk about a lot of these bigger things… even if it’s the culture of import and export, depending on who or what we are influencing...”

M.anifest, born Kwame Ametepee Tsikata, is a multiple award-winning rapper and songwriter with hit songs such as No Shortcut to Heaven, Ebei, Forget Them, and Someway Bi. His latest album is Nowhere Cool, released on 8 September 2016.