Figure 3.7. Keur Gui
Figure 3.8. Nazlee
Figure 5.1. K’naan
Figure 5.2. Blitz the Ambassador
Figure 5.3. Wanlov the Kubolor
Figure 5.4. Ruyonga (formerly Krukid)
Foreword
“African Hip-Hop Represent!”
Quentin Williams
There are few books written on African hip-hop that capture the form and function of the culture on the African continent. There are even fewer studies that make an authoritative statement on the linguistic and cultural diversity and practice of African hip-hop. And now and then a single study pushes the field of hip-hop studies into a critical direction so that it takes seriously the contribution of African hip-hop studies in not only expanding the field of hip-hop but better capturing the future of the culture on the African continent. Msia Clark’s Hip-Hop in Africa: Prophets of the City and Dustyfoot Philosophers is such a study.
The question of the roots of African hip-hop starts with the use of local and European languages, representing the repressed and marginalized voices by enacting the principles of the fifth element of hip-hop, and projecting it as a culture that is inclusive, original, and diverse in genres and practices. In this excellent study by Clark, hiphop in Africa is represented as multifarious, never as a monolith. The author challenges our perception that this culture in Africa is merely “imitating American culture.” But of course that is not the case because African hip-hop artists draw on a variety of ways of being and doing African hip-hop. And where they do sample American hip-hop they do so for authenticity and to go against “locationists”, who seek to typify what they do. We cannot typify African hip-hop artists, Clark argues, because doing so “robs the African emcee of the power to self-identify as an African emcee.”
Clark’s study is a statement for advancing the practice of knowledge of self, the fifth element of hip-hop. Her study argues that hiphop in the African continent has always focused on politically and socially conscious music: from South Africa’s Prophets of da City to Kwanza Unit in Tanzania to Das Primeiro in Angola. For decades, hiphop culture has represented the frictions and flows of all its elements: all over Africa we hear and see the embodiment of the culture and read the narratives of celebration and discontent that critically reflect on the history of colonialism, the political structures that have arisen with apartheid, the social reengineering of Pan-African identities for groups and individuals, and the economic restructuring of previously destitute countries. Hip-hop in Africa has always accounted for the flows and the frictions that have come to make it a culture on this beautiful continent, and with an increasingly technological world structure in clouds (Google Drive, Dropbox) and new forms of music-sharing platforms, the variations of the culture in Africa has come to earn its place in the global hip-hop community.
This monograph by Clark powerfully demonstrates the strength of African hip-hop not only in how hip-hop artists represent the culture, but how it codes language to draw in its audience, how it discourses and criticizes neoliberal economic policies that African states and nations often adopt wholesale, often to the detriment of the population, and that has lead to the politicization of hip-hop. As Clark puts it, “it is important to understand and further emphasize the historical and contemporary interconnectedness of the socioeconomic environments throughout urban Africa, and how that has manifested into the emergence of hip-hop artists as potential agents of change.”
The idea of hip-hop artists being agents of change has been around since the inception of the culture. And given this, there will always be friction when it comes to democracy for hip-hop artists in Africa. History has shown that African governments often treat their citizens with degrees of disdain, and hip-hop on the continent has always engaged governments, often taking losses in the process. From the banning of Prophets of da City in apartheid South Africa to the recent imprisonment of Luaty Beirão (aka Ikonoklasta) in Angola, the costs for hip-hop artists in Africa are often high and unfair. But hip-hop artists who draw on the Fifth Element acknowledge that engagement with repressive state apparatuses (à la Althusser) are done so for the sake of social and democratic change. This engagement, or the production of hip-hop music that engages with the state, Clark describes, is also accomplished through “combat literature” (à la Fanon) or protest literature. That is, the production of hip-hop lyrics and rhymes that challenges the recolonization of social life by undemocratic means, such as corruption, violence, racialization, ethnic intolerance, and the criminalization of homosexuality.
This continues to be an admirable fight, but one often thwarted by hip-hop’s own hypocrisy. Consider for example that hip-hop has and will remain burdened by the gender and sexuality question, and it has yet to start an honest conversation about its gender roots and principles and about its future. It is obvious as hip-hop becomes more globalized it will need to be more inclusive about gender and sexuality, and assert its support for women and queer people marginalized by nations, governments, and states who legislate against their bodies and everyday lives. Clark’s study demonstrates that female African hip-hop artists know the rules of hip-hop and often “force a space for themselves in hip-hop communities” and at the same time “challenge prevailing ideas of femininity.” She argues throughout that while gender and sexual identity are represented differently in African hip-hop music, women who do hip-hop in Africa not only present their own “masculinities” but also open up a dialogue about gender and sexuality that is often only held by men. Clark describes how a female hip-hop artist may use braggadocio as a way to stake a claim to her position while at the same time doing so to highlight the struggles of women in and outside the hip-hop culture. Women active in African hip-hop focus on social problems such as violence against their body: this includes rape and sexual abuse; ideological oppression via patriarchy; issues related to the LGBTQI community, and so on. But women in African hip-hop are also critical of the politics of respectability and particularly their place in hip-hop culture. As Clark argues, “Unlike in the United States, however, female emcees in Africa operate in cultural and historical landscapes in which images of female sexuality in the media have been minimal, and in society in which public expressions or displays are either forbidden or are rare.”
However, and this is Clark’s point, female hip-hop artists are still seen as objects of sexual desire, and this may compromise their agency in the practice of hip-hop culture, particularly in the face of the continued misogyny and sexism that plagues hip-hop generally. It is therefore imperative, as Clark goes on to discuss, that we emphasize that hip-hop spaces in Africa generally are contested spaces for female hip-hop artists; but those spaces are also contested by migrants, particularly hip-hop migrants.
Migration and the frictions that come with it are a pervasive theme in African hip-hop. Rap artists and graffiti artists, for example, have represented the challenges that come with leaving a home you have lived all your life in and the challenge of finding a new place, and feeling at home in that place. Clark asserts that African hip-hop artists represent, and put to lyrics and artwork, the transnational character of in- and out-migration on the continent. They “bring together Afropolitanism and Pan-Africanism, in a way that challenges the classism found in Afropolitanism.” But in this bringing together, African hip-hop artists also demonstrate the pain and existential urgency that come with migration. Through their music, African hip-hop artists demonstrate that migration can be a challenge but, as Clark argues, “using hip-hop culture, with its roots in urban Black America, the artists are able to reemphasize African identities . . . [and they] often talk about where they are from, give stories of their hometown, and boast of coming from a certain city.”
Migration for hip-hop artists is often also an opportunity to open up new networks to expand the flow of hip-hop on the continent and beyond. Through such an opening up, new narratives of home and away evolve and the diaspora link becomes stronger. This is important to understand, as Clark aptly describes, because experiences of migration, alienation, and identity struggles are a continued theme in African hip-hop music.
The brilliance of Clark’s