Outside of Africa and certain circles, if you bring up hiplife in conversation you will probably need to explain yourself. That is, you will if your listener’s eyes don’t glaze over when you say it’s from Ghana.
But inside Africa, you have to be living pretty far from any cell phones, TVs or internet cafes to not know the jerky moves of the Azonto dance or the aggressively catchy fusion hip-hop that’s come to be known as hiplife that inspired it.
Inside Ghana, it’s hard to even explain the kind of real estate the sound has in the national consciousness. Lazzy, one-third of pioneering hiplife group VIP, took time out after a photo shoot to try to quantify things via cell phone: “Hiplife is everything in Ghana right now. It gets like 90 percent more airplay than any other song. It’s there when you go to the clubs, to the bars, you hear hiplife.”
The word combines hip-hop with highlife, a jazzy Ghanaian genre driven by brass and guitar. Hiplife itself is a combination of hip-hop, highlife and even more traditional Ghanaian folk elements like the kpanlogo drum. The sound is African rhythms and hooks in overdrive with a little dancehall and Auto-Tune smoothing the ride. The lyrics are in English and Ghanaian regional languages. As pop goes, it’s a musical freight train and it’s spreading far beyond Ghana’s borders.
VIP, comprised today of members Lazzy, Promzy and Prodigal, has been one of hiplife’s major engines for over a decade. And, in many ways, their story is hiplife’s story. They came up among founders of the genre like Reggie Rockstone. Today, they collaborate with the top names in the game like Sarkodie and foster young talent like their protégés in FOI. Last year, they took home Artist of the Year at the Ghana Music Awards.
“VIP are like that household name. Every few years they have this hit and it’s like an amazing comeback and you walk down the street and you hear the women in the market singing their songs and the little kids singing their songs,” says American documentary filmmaker Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi.
His film HomeGrown: HipLife in Ghana chronicles the hiplife pioneers’ rise to fame. He got to know the group while studying in Ghana and DJ at the college radio station. He befriended the then up-and-coming group when they brought their CD to station. He ended up directing the video for their song “Besin.” In the video a pack of small boys chases the trio through the dirt streets of Nima, the neighborhood in Accra where VIP is from. He couldn’t have known that someday they’d be the biggest hiplife act in the country.
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