20-year old Comfort Ogheneruro Fedoke (Nigerian parents, born in Texas but calls Lagos home) is competing in 'So you think you can dance', a popular tv show on American tv.
Watch her dancing to an old school electro tune by The Egyptian Lover and judge for yourself: will she make it to the finals and win the grand prize of a one year contract for Celine Dion's Vegas show, a brand new car and $100K cash?
This devastating tune from dj Mujava is about to be released worldwide on the renown Warp Records (and This Is Music Records for the UK). Despite high expectations (and opportunities like the Tsotsi movie soundtrack), kwaito and related music from South Africa has not yet led to a worldwide craze in the way Brazilian favela funk has.
Maybe this one is a step in the right direction... It's already being picked up already by trendsetting radio deejays in the UK.
Release dates are September 15 (12 inch) and August 11 (digital).
After a long absence, during which we worked hard behind the scenes on the upcoming site changes and started a local version of African hip hop radio in Dutch, the African hip hop radio team is back with monthly updates and new presenter Amal.
The July 2008 show is filled to the brim with the hottest tracks from the past six months and no less than three interviews: Zubz, Rich Medina and Mawe2. Also from this month on, our veteran presenter Lee Kasumba (also known from YFM in Johannesburg) is back with a monthly update. In her contributions she focuses on upcoming artists from all over the African continent.
Hip hop culture, as we know, has made a major contribution in unearthing obscure funk and soul music from the 1970s and 80s. Numerous jazz musicians have rebuilt their careers over being sampled by A Tribe Called Quest, Gangstarr etc.
The art of digging for rare records that came to life in the late 70's Bronx through people like Afrika Bambaataa a.k.a. the Master of Records is now a worldwide culture led by 30-plus funk and hip hop heads who have the history, knowledge and money to go out and buy stuff. One of them is Frank aka dj Soulpusher, a German dj (and 'vinyl archeologist' as he calls himself) who migrated to Guinee-Conakry in 2005 with the prime purpose of digging for rare vinyl and then playing them in clubs back home, making online mixes and selling some of the doubles (and these records may easily sell for over a hundred euros each).
While many producers in Africa are still sleeping on the sampling and inspirational potential of afrobeat, afrofunk etc, Frank's blog has become really popular with an international crowd, and consequently a lot of lost classics get rediscovered and sometimes compiled or sampled.
Now Frank recently moved back to New York where he lived before, but his web updates are still on. Have a look at this trailer for "Take Me Away Fast", a documentary in the making on his digging all over West Africa.
If you are in NYC you can catch him tomorrow night (July 12) playing his tunes during Bumpshop at club APT, 419 West 13th St.
Anybody who visited or lived in Kenya in the early 90's? One thing that you won't be able to erase from memory is the abundance of matatu's, the preferred and cheap public transport. The mini buses that tended to take way more people than they were supposed to were also instrumental in the spread of hip hop and dancehall. Buses with names like 'Black spider' (painted to live up to its name) drove around with heavy bass speakers under the chairs so that Shabba Ranks' tunes (favorite around 1993) would be felt to the bone even by the elders whose complaints did not always result in the lowering of the volume. Today, much of matatu culture is still alive, but the government has tried to regulate the industry a bit by introducing speed limiters, seatbelts for passengers and registered personnel. Apparently safety has improved since 2003.
Have a look at this video by radio presenter Jimmy Gathu from around 1992 - not only is it one of the first ever rap videos in Kenya, it also gives a unique view into matatu culture as it was back in the days: 'Look, think, stay alive!' And the music? Well... let's just say that Gathu did his work as one of the pioneers in local rap. Speaking of which: in UK at the MCs for Life conference we ran into veteran producer Andrew 'Madebe'! In the 90's he was among the first to produce local hip hop in Mombasa with kina Fundi Frank. Earlier this year he moved back to UK for health reasons.
The coming weekend (28/29 June), Africanhiphop.com will be on a panel at the MCs for Life conference in Manchester and Birmingham (UK) together with respected artists like Lord Finesse, Ursula Rucker, Rich Medina and Black Thought from the Roots.
The two-day event is part of the annual Bass Festival organized by Punch, and is the follow-up to the DJs and Bboys for Life conferences.
From the press release: "MCing represents the ultimate expression of attitude in popular culture and in recent years has become the most prominent of the four main elements of hip-hop. Comprised of discussion panels, masterclasses, films and battles, ‘MCs for Life’ seeks to identify the role of the MC within hip-hop. For example, the development of the MC, from the ‘toasting’ with Jamaican sound systems to the birth of hip-hop when MC’s would toast over a breakbeat. Changes in language and styles of rap and the international distillation of rap such as Grime (London), Hip Life (Ghana), Timba (Cuba), Kuduro(Angola) and Kwaito (South Africa) will also be looked at."
Other participants include DJ Spooky, Tumi, Nappo, Omekongo, Lebo Mashile, Charlie Dark, Hymphatic Tabs, Benji Reid, Ty, Segun, Jonzi D, BREIS, Baby J, Zaki and Ben Sharpa.
The Dutch Tropenmuseum (Tropical museum) was built in Amsterdam at the height of the colonial empire in the 1920s, and still breathes the abundant atmosphere of the era. These days its collection is mostly applied to teach the younger generations about cultures that have often been crushed by westernized civilizations. But the museum also gives way to popular culture and the month of june highlights hip hop from around the world.
Hiphopessentials is a festival lasting until 22nd of June with a concert that some of you people in the Netherlands missed out on last week (Masta Ace and the Pan Africans, shame on you for not attending!), film screenings (a.o. Favela rising and Letter to the president) and an exhibition of some photos from the Say My Name Africa (SMNA) project. SMNA is a documentary in the making about female emcees in Africa of which the first parts have been filmed in Abidjan (Ivory Coast) and Luanda (Angola). From the footage we were allowed to view it's a promising project, and the filmmakers are still planning to visit other cities as well! The girls they filmed and photographed include Nash & Priss-K and some ladies from the lively kuduro scene in Angola.
Unless you spent the past few weeks on a deserted island you must have read & heard about, and maybe even experienced the current xenophobic (anti-foreign) violence in South Africa. And while hip hop is still being depicted today by popular media as a breeding ground for violence, in these difficult times it turns out to be the only pop culture to show compassion and support to the victims of the attacks. Hip hop against violence!
Heads in Johannesburg and Cape Town have united to organize two major hip hop events creating awareness and expressing a loud 'NO' from within the polynational population that makes up the South African hip hop community. Both take place on the 1st of June (next sunday) and donations to victims of the violence are being collected at the event, so bring what you can.
Cape Town: State of Emergency
With Tapedeck circuitry, Nosisi, Rattex, Driemanskap, Jitsvinger, speakers Emile YX, Lizo from Round Table, dj Quake, breakdancers Black Noise and more...
In Allnyz, Gugulethu sports complex from 12:00, free entrance!
Donations: clothes and blankets for victims of xenophobia.
Johannesburg: Heads Against Violence
With Tumi, Reason, Ben Sharpa, Zeus, Hymphatic Thans, Obita, Nthabi, Zubs, Snazz D, dj's Papercutt, Bionic, Kenzhero and many more...
Bassline, entrance R50 + donations: blanket, food, nappies, clothers or other donations you may have.
Ekinox (Congo-DRC, living in Montreal, Canada) never sold out and so he has stock of his own mixtape! The album hustle has been depicted in this all-new video shot on the streets of his hometown. If you see a familiar face it's because Ekinox is the brother of Don Klemente who lives in Belgium.
If you were wondering whatever happened to the Sakpata Boys, the pioneers of hip hop in Benin who succesfully merged traditional music into their recordings: they moved to New York. The video above features 2 out of 3 Boys and plays two songs in a row. From what we tell, Sakpata are doing well but we'd ask them to send a postcard every once in a while ;)
You have landed at Africanhiphop.com, the foundation of African Hip Hop culture on the web. This site, originally called 'Rumba-Kali Home of Pan African Hip Hop' was initiated in February 1997 as a platform for information and discussion on hip hop from the African continent.
