Rap star M.anifest has claimed that Hiplife is dead in a new documentary by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) titled Hiplife Rewind.
Speaking in the documentary the rap star posited that Hiplife is dead. According to the Ghanaian rapper, Hiplife is dead because the young are no more interested in it.
“Hiplife is dead because the driving force of the music is the younger people and the younger people do not identify with Hiplife,” he asserted, shifting in his seat and sitting up.
According to him, Hiplife tastemakers contributed to the death of Hiplife also because they were at a point too conservative to recognise and participate in the evolution of music in West Africa.
“The originators of Hiplife were a bit too precious about what it should be so as new versions sonically were happening, you could hear people saying, ‘Oh, this Jama, this Azonto, is watered down, it’s not real’,” he noted, adding that insisting on the “idea of real,” these industry powers failed to identify that: “You have to evolve or perish [and that] is what any music form has to understand.”
“Those who were gatekeeping Hiplife were refusing to acknowledge the evolution and the thing must evolve. The thing must evolve,” he stressed. “For it to survive, the thing must evolve.”
The documentary features creatives who made significant contributions to the genre’s inception, and how they aimed to make the sound appealing to the western audience. The genre Hiplife birthed Ghanaian megastars like VVIP (formerly VIP), Tic (formerly Tic Tac), Lord Kenya, BukBak, 4×4, Kontihene, Obrafour, Okyeame Kwame, M.anifest, M3nsa, Sarkodie, etc
