This 329-page book, which includes over 50 photographs, deals with the origin and nature of Ghanaian hiplife music. This contemporary urban popular dance music style began in the 1990s as a local form of American hip hop and rap, but over the years it has taken on a more local identity. The sociopolitical background from which it emerged was one of almost 20 years of military rule when the Ghanaian economy and local music industry crashed, there was an exodus of musicians abroad, and music was demoted in the education system. Old forms of highlife declined and were replaced by dance music being taken up by the multiplying churches (i.e. local gospel music) and by forms of techno-pop that made it easier and less expensive to produce music. The first techno-pop alternative was the disco-influenced ‘burger highlife’ of the 1980s, which was played in discotheques and by ‘spinners’ (mobile discos) – followed by hiplife.
Hiplife began to develop in the early 1990s after the economy was liberalised, there was a return to democracy (1992) and the airwaves were deregulated. As Shipley points out, hiplife was initially a product of urban middle-class youth and was based on American hip hop beats and rapped in English. In fact, it was largely an imitation of American hip hop complete with breakdancing, ‘yo-yo boys’ fashions, ‘bling-bling’ adornment and projected images of materialistic success. This influence was augmented in 1994 when the American rap group Public Enemy played in Ghana. By the mid-1990s, however, the youth began rapping in local languages and the name hip-life (i.e. hip hop–highlife) was coined by Reggie Rockstone to signify the arrival of a Ghanaian brand of the music.
Taking into account the demise of live highlife bands and the removal of music from school curricula during the military era, hiplife provided the youth of Ghana's neo-liberal era with a musical voice. Indeed, linguistic dexterity, code switching, story-telling, proverbial speech and self-referential boasting became an important ingredient of hiplife. To emphasise the Ghanaianess of this new form of hip hop, some hiplifers gave themselves traditional names like Nananom (ancestors), Omanhene (chief), Obrafour (court executioner), Motia (magical dwarf) and Okyeame (court orator). Despite these names, the music of hiplife was at first still basically that of American funk and hip hop beats. This changed in the late 1990s when hiplifers began to collaborate with old-time highlife artists – or used sampled highlife loops or electronic versions of traditional rhythms. The latter gave rise to the ‘jama’ or ‘jamma’ style of hiplife that has become a popular party-time music. However – and like the earlier hiplife and indeed burger hiplife – this was mainly lip-synched at public performances; the change to live performance only began around 2002. By the late 2000s another hiplife style emerged which Shipley calls ‘hardcore’ and which rejected jama as being too light-hearted, concentrating on more serious lyrics and at the same time doing live ‘freestyling’ public performances.
Shipley goes into some detail relating hiplife to the neo-liberal climate of individualism and private enterprise that has typified Ghana since the early 1990s. Hiplife artists therefore strived to be become celebrities and music moguls who branded their music as a product to be marketed. This entrepreneurial spirit resulted in some hiplifers being used to advertise products on billboards and the mass media, like Rockstone and the R2Bees (which means ‘refuse to be broke’). Another aspect of the hiplife individualism that is not mentioned by Shipley is reflected in the fact that hiplife artists are solo or duo stars and do not run bands.
On this question of the individualistic ethos, Shipley makes an interesting parallel between hiplife and the new African charismatic and Pentecostal churches that have mushroomed in Ghana since the 1980s. Both project an individualistic approach to, respectively, becoming a successful musician or having a personal relationship with the Holy Ghost. Both promote material success: indeed the modern churches are called ‘prosperity’ churches.
Shipley devotes a whole chapter to the women in hiplife, who are few in number (e.g. Abrewa Nana and Mzbel). He relates this both to the traditional taboos in Ghana concerning women performers, and the hyper-masculinity of hiplife lyrics in which women are seen as objects of consumption and desire. This, he believes, partly stems from the American hip hop model as well as the male Ghanaian nervousness of modern women in terms of their growing economic and social independence. Shipley quotes Mzbel as saying that she hopes her role will open the doors to more female hiplifers. But this is far from happening, as most female popular dance music performers operate rather in the gospel music sphere (in fact Abrewa Nana has moved into gospel), while others (some church trained, like Efya) are moving into a new genre known as ‘Afro-pop’ or ‘Twi-pop’ that will be mentioned later.
Shipley discusses the cosmopolitan nature of hiplife and notes that some of its pioneers (e.g. Rockstone and Nana King) were actually raised abroad. In Chapter 1 Shipley examines this in relation to the wider music of the Black Americas, referring both to Paul Gilroy's notion of the ‘Black Atlantic’ and also to Michael Hanchard's concept of ‘Afro-modernism’ which focuses on the selective incorporation of certain aspects of Western culture by African-derived people – and by extension, Africans. To add more historical depth here Shipley could have mentioned earlier forms of ‘Afro-modernism/cosmopolitanism’, like the 19th-century Liberian Kru sailors who Africanised the Spanish guitar on the high seas.
Even from the book's title one can see that Shipley firmly places the development of hiplife in the context of Ghana's neo-liberal climate of celebrities and entrepreneurs, i.e. hiplifers looking for fame and fortune. But he does not fully discuss that fact that hip hop was also recontextualised in Ghana as a flag or signifier for the young generation of the 1990s against the old – who did not like hiplife's fast talk, lip-synched performances, ‘gangsta rap’ and lewd and sometimes misogynist lyrics.
This book was written some years ago and as a final point I should mention that hiplife has continued to split into various subgenres. Shipley mentions ‘jama/jamma’ and ‘hardcore’ (now known as ‘Gh rap’). Others are ‘contemporary highlife’ which focuses more on singing than rapping, and the new hiplife ‘azonto’ dance style. Yet another hiplife subgenre is ‘rag-life’, which is influenced by Jamaican dance-floor and ragga. This Jamaican undercurrent has been felt in hiplife from its very beginnings – but is not really covered in Shipley's book. At the same time there has been in the last few years a fusion of hiplife with American ‘contemporary urban/R&B’, equivalent to what happened in the US from the 1980s when hip hop fused with R&B and soul to produce ‘new jack swing’ and ‘neo soul’. As with these two offshoots of American hip hop. Ghanaian women play an important role in this new extension of hiplife which, as mentioned earlier, is called ‘Afro-pop’ or ‘Twi-pop’ (or sometimes ‘Afrobeats’).
