Mutumbo’s Sweet Memories

Jan 11, 2011 | ,

Spoken word / poetry has stuttered across the continent, going through ebbs and flows as poets grapple to build platforms and garner the kind of support necessary to sustain a life dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in word, thought and craft. In Ghana, it is no different. Two years ago, I attended the Bless The Mic open mic series in Accra run by Mi Prime Entertainment and briefly met their resident poet, Mutombo. We shared thoughts on poetry, we shared a poem and went our separate ways. In that time, Mutumbo has been paying his dues, and contributing to the development of the scene in...

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Herbie Hancock’s Imagine

Jan 8, 2011 |

There are those albums that creep up on you. You press play without really expecting anything. You have heard nothing of it. There are no preconceived ideas of what it will sound like. There are no egos, no back story, no tabloid fodder that predisposses you to interacting with it positively or negatively. You go into it as a blank canvas for the musician to paint whatever they deem fit on you. It is - simply - about the music. Herbie Hancock's The Imagine Project is such an album. Herbie Hancock's career as musician started about 50 years - and over 40 albums - ago and, in that time, he has...

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Sway Brings UK Blackstars

Dec 19, 2010 |

Sway Dcypha has been carrying the flag for Ghanaians at the forefront of UK hip hop for some time now. His mixtapes are legendary and his relationship with Akon's Konvict Muzik was, in my eyes, supposed to truly launch him onto a full global stage. This seems to moving slower than hoped but Sway and Dcypha Productions continue to drop classic UK / Ghana hip hop. The two most recent are The Delivery Mixtape 2 and Bring Me To Africa (which features collaborations with some of Ghana's finest). He recently released a remix of Bring Me, which features Dcypha Productions' new signing Klayz, as...

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Win Public Enemy’s Apocalypse 91

Nov 25, 2010 | ,

In Johannesburg, next week, is an event that is momentous and will go down as one of those life-defining moments. Public Enemy will be performing at the Alex Theatre in Braamfontein on December 3rd & 4th. They will be in Cape Town on the 7th and 8th of December. The Public Enemy South Africa tour is being organised by Showtime Management, 206 Productions and Keep Music Live, in association with Kaya FM, MTV Base and Good Hope FM and features Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Professor Griff and the Security of the First World. Public Enemy, in particular Chuck D, has contributed much to my...

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Kobi Onyame’s Inner City Lights

Oct 11, 2010 |

Ghanaian / UK-based hip hop producer and artist Kobi Onyame was the first artist I profiled (He Said, She Said - June 2009) when I started my Wordpress blog. Part of what I wanted to do with this space was to share some of the music I came across, whether mainstream or not, and Kobi led the way. It has been over a year. He has continued to build, and so have I. In the time since I profiled him, he has, amongst other things, recorded a He Said, She Said remix with Sway (Sway Dcyphas Life - April 2010), performed at Glastonbury Festival, shared a bill with artists like De La Soul, Kanye West,...

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Wake Up Call From John Legend & The Roots

Sep 29, 2010 |

In the past lie the seeds for the present. In the present linger visions of the future. Sometimes. To build tomorrow, we need to look to yesterday. John Legend & The Roots’ new collaboration Wake Up! is perfect example of this. Sadly, a lot of music today is flimsy, shallow, lacking an understanding of where we are spiritually, politically, intellectually, etc. Much of it (or at least the stuff that is pushed out at us by mass media) seems to have become a derivative of mediocre, watered-down pop music, without creativity or commitment. It is hard to differentiate between artists (and I...

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