Growing up in the early parts of 2000 was really awesome. Social media had not taken over the world, and we didn’t have dozens of new songs released every single day.
Underground artistes had to understudy for years before they could break out, and the kings were the top music producers and sound engineers like Appietus and Hammer.
Those were the glorious days when I could rap along with all the hiplife songs, and could sing the choruses, even in my sleep. This is not to say that the songs that we have these days are not good. We have kings in these periods too.
However, I have listed ten songs that dropped in a period when I had the luxury of listening and dancing to. These songs were some of those that I won’t ever forget, even if I should try to.
The debate over whether or not he is the father of hiplife music, may still be going on, but that doesn’t mean that Reggie didn’t give us some great tunes. His songs were some of the most interesting to learn how to sing. His rap lines, with the ‘kyekyes’ accent (that is what we called the accents that we weren’t used to), were such that my friends and I challenged one another on who could get all the lines first. Sadly, my mind and ears weren’t attentive enough to win any of such challenges. The only part I got from this song was ‘Eye mo de anaa, eye ye de paa.’
I think this song is what brought Kwaw Kesse into the lime light. The video of this song showed this bare-chested dark fellow, with a stethoscope, who looked like he was checking his own heartbeat, whatever that means, I don’t know. Then came the chorus that went against most of the things that I was taught as a child, but sounded very great indeed. That Kwaw talked so easily about wooing a woman and then taking her to bed was intriguing for a child like me who had seen the older boys try to impress the girls and then…
Legends are made and they live on forever. I found it difficult to decide on which of Obrafour’s songs that was to be added. He is one of the deepest Ghanaian rappers who can speak Twi almost perfectly and can infuse his music with some great Twi proverbs.
This is arguably one of the best love songs ever in Ghana, in my opinion. With this song, Okomfo calls on his lover to draw closer to him. You may say it is crude and whatever you want to add to it, but what if Kwadee is showing us how the African man who has not been westernized behaves when he wants to be romantic. Then comes the video, with the movie-like storyline. This method in music videos were the order of the day at the time. With these music videos, we could learn some lessons in life as we enjoyed the songs.
I added this song to this list because of how interesting it is that I learned the lyrics of this song without knowing what the Ga lines meant, and didn’t even know what language King David used. At the time, Batman [now rebranded to Samini] was one of my favorite rappers because of the ‘Kpoi’ catchphrase. That doesn’t mean that the song is not a great one. This is one of the great times that high life and hip life met in this country.
Who would do a list of great hiplife tracks and forget about Lord Kenya. It’s true that he is now born again and has stopped doing hiplife music; but ‘sika mpo mfa ne ho’ is one of the best motivational songs for me. Very early in my life, this song taught me to appreciate what I have, and to hope and have faith that the future has better things in store for me.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
