Okyeame Kwame writes: I cry for the future of hiplife

Hiplife is arguably one of the most vibrant genre of music in Ghana today with the youth forming a chunk of the performers.

Available literature ties the history of the emergence of hiplife to the early 1990s when Reginald Osei, also known as Reggie Rockstone debuted his Makaa Maka album.

Hitherto, K.K Kabobo, Gyedu Blay Ambolley and Azigiza Jnr. were doing a form of rap music that was somewhat similar to the hiplife we know today.

Throughout the periods, hiplife has emerged as a global concept with countries like United Kingdom, Canada, United States and Germany embracing the popular culture. Ghana thus enjoys the honor of been named as the place of origin of hiplife.

Hiplife has since its inception seen tremendous changes with the likes of Akyeame, Yogie Doggie, VIP, Samini, Nananom, Ex Doe, Chicago, Root Eye just to mention but few all part of the building blocks of the growing hiplife.

The new breed of artistes including: Sakordie, Flowking Stone, R2bees, EL, Efya, XO Senavoe, Manifest, D Black, Trigmatic and a host of others have also contributed immensely to the hiplife that we know of today.

It is obvious that the energy, passion and knowledge of social media engagements have enabled the current hiplife artistes to attain greater feats that their predecessors could probably not attain.

These artistes stand on the shoulders of the beginners, and therefore, can see further than some of us.

This is why it is not surprising that Sakordie and Stonebwoy won one of the most coveted awards in the history of entertainment, the BET Awards. Hence, the need to protect the "hiplife culture’’ that has become important as it affords us the pride of being Ghanaians.

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