“I wish Sarkodie was born in Harlem because I’d be bigger than Kanye and Jay,” the Ghanaian rapper
Sarkodie (Michael Owusu Addo to those who know him personally) boasts on “Preach,” a track off his 2014 album
Sarkology.
Jay Z and Kanye West are artists he expresses great admiration for, but
the 27-year-old has built an enviable career of his own. He’s one of
the most bankable and popular MCs in Africa, and one of the most
well-known outside of it. The list of national and international awards
he has received has its own
Wikipedia page and includes MTV Africa and BET Awards. Put his CV next to his discography of international hits and groundbreaking
albums, and his hyperbolic bon mot starts to seem, well, quite reasonable.
This
past month, he brought the massive annual concert he usually holds with
other artists in Accra to the Apollo in New York City. The sold-out
show was billed as “Sarkodie: History in the Making” and it was at least
unusual for an event of its kind in the States. While Ghanaian stars
like Sarkodie or rapper E.L.—who was also on the bill—come to New York
from time to time, they often
play
big all-night affairs in the Bronx where a large Ghanaian community
resides. This event coming together at the Apollo indicates that west
Africa’s bold-face names are making greater inroads in the US. It’s also
testament to Sarkodie’s star power.
The MC has been able to
accomplish all of this while breaking the mold for a chart-topping
artist in Africa’s music industry. He’s no
stranger
to the pop arena and has had hits in the once-trendy azonto style, but
he is a hip-hop artist without apology. “The hip-hop scene is strong,
but you can’t run away from the fact that you are in Africa,” he says.
“What sells is danceable music.” Though he’s not willing to compromise
his love of less than radio friendly rap he has nevertheless found a
successful formula and carved out a very big niche for himself: “I speak
Twi and I rap on hip-hop beats. I bring the beats from the States, but I
take the content from Africa, specifically Ghana.”
In his recent
videos and output, there are, indeed, nods to ‘Ye and Jay’s grim and
grandiose gestures—something that doesn’t translate perfectly with a
mainstream audience that
favors infectious, Afropop accented club rap. Beyond his US rap touchstones, Sarkodie is an artist very much in his own mold.
Sarkology is
a two-disc crucible that melds influences like highlife, dancehall,
grime and EDM into an operatic whole. The productions provide a dramatic
backdrop for his literally
inimitable flow.
His
fans have given him the title of “Africa’s fastest rapper” and it has
stuck because of its accuracy. Toggling rapidly between English and Twi,
he’s hard enough for a listener to follow, let alone another MC. When
he rhymes in English, Ghana’s official language, you have to listen
carefully or you’ll miss half a dozen references to American music and
shout outs to Ghanaian and Nigerian artists. His lines in Twi,
punctuated by his signature nasal snarl, are verbal juggernauts.
One
might think that rapping in Twi would limit his appeal, but it’s a
first language for 9 million people in Ghana, and when he does a verse
in Twi, he is speaking directly to all of them, from the heart. “I grew
up speaking Twi ever since I was a kid, so my emotions are in that,” he
explains.
While he appreciates the sentiment, the “fastest rapper”
tag does get tiresome. “To me, I think it’s too limiting, if we’re
talking about what I have to offer the world,” he gripes mildly. The
maturity and variety of the tracks on
Sarkology make that
plain. “I’m a fast talker in general, if you noticed. So it makes sense
if I have to rap fast,” he offers. He does speak at a strikingly
rapid clip, but it seems natural and effortless.
A
fast-talker he is, but you wouldn’t call him chatty. By all accounts
Sarkodie can be reserved and staunchly private, however, when we met at
the MTV Iggy offices he is warm, ebullient even, despite his practiced
professional distance and the shades he rarely removes.
At any rate, he clearly doesn’t have any trouble making friends. Another aspect of
Sarkology’s
ambition
is the sheer quantity of other stars who feature on it. With guest
spots from Ghana’s queen of soul Efya, E.L. and Nigerian vocalists
Davido and Banky W, to name a few, there’s a lot of overlap between the
album credits and
winners of the
MTV Africa Music Awards over the last several years. Outside of Ghana,
he gets his warmest welcome in Lagos, the largest city in neighboring
Nigeria, a short flight from Accra. This is key to his success as
Nigeria’s entertainment industry dominates the continent. Ghana and
Nigeria’s hip-hop and R&B artists frequently collaborate and share
stages, and they have become the vanguard of a new wave of Afropop,
often dubbed “Afrobeats” in markets outside Africa, such as London.
Shared cultural touchstones are a big part of this relationship. “We
have similarities. Both countries grew up on highlife, so then we have
similarities when it comes to sound. When we collaborate you don’t see
differences; we just make good music,” Sarkodie explains. Harmonious as
the relationship is, he doesn’t view the two countries’ music industries
in terms of brotherhood, or rivalry. “I’m an artist, so I look at it
from a business perspective,” he says. “I look at Nigeria with their
masses, talking about the numbers that they have. If you are from
Nigeria, even if you are a B-Class of an artist, you probably get more
followers on Twitter. We need each other to get to the next level.”
Speaking
of the next level, his soon-to-be-released fourth album promises to be
both a further evolution and, in its own way, just as ambitious as the
30-track
Sarkology. Produced by Akwaboah, the first signee to Sarkodie’s SarkCess Music label,
Mary was
made with entirely live instrumentation and is named for his beloved
late grandmother. “She always wanted me to do live music. She liked
hip-hop, but she was more into live music, the live drums, live guitars,
not too much that’s computerized. I should have done it for her and now
she’s gone,” he laments.
He’s reluctant to come out and admit to a
heavy highlife influence on this album because he’s afraid of
alienating his rap loving hardcore supporters, though one gets the
feeling they won’t be disappointed. “I took it back to my people, the
sounds that we grew up on, and the sounds that I loved growing up. I’m
trying to take the indigenous Ghanaian music to the world,” he
equivocates. Ultimately, he says he wants to avoid being predictable.
This is as vital to rap in Ghana as it is anywhere.
“We just need
people who will be themselves and bring something new to the game. When
we copy from the States directly, what you guys talk about, it doesn’t
make sense in Ghana. If I talk about having a Bugatti, even if I do have
it, they won’t believe it,” he says. Sarkodie will allow that some of
the grittier American hip-hop
lyrics
are often very easy to relate to: “That is why hip-hop is accepted in
Africa—and dancehall, because they represent the struggle, maybe not the
new strain of hip-hop, but the hip-hop talking about what’s going on in
the ghetto, the hustle. That’s our daily life in Africa. We hustle each
and every day, so we relate a lot.”
He raps about growing up under difficult circumstances, raised by a
single mother, but if you ask him about Tema, the port town where he
grew up, you’ll only hear good memories. He describes the city, where he
still lives, as “well-planned, like New York.” Reminiscing, he says,
“We loved hip-hop for ages because we were the only city that had
basketball courts in every area. Our swag was just on point. We were
living the life.”
Sarkodie takes his own advice when it come to writing
songs fellow Ghanaians and Africans can relate to. He has bars about love, sex and the rap game, but he also has topical songs so specific they sound like the transcript of a parliamentary session. For example, the terse
“Inflation (Ghana Economy)” deals with Ghana’s monetary issues and the Fela Kuti sampling
“Dumsor” vents
frustration over Ghana’s regular yet unpredictable power outages. The
latter was part of the campaign he took part in protesting Ghana’s
energy problems. As far as the energy crisis goes, he says, “That’s
something that I feel directly. When the lights are out but you want to
record, you have to tell the producer, ‘I’m sorry we don’t have lights,
can you come tomorrow.’ I might be talking for the people but I’m
talking for myself as well. When I talk about the currency … I had to
change $5,000 and I was going to the UK, I had to get like 20,000 Ghana
CDs and it didn’t make sense to me. That’s what actually made me go and
write a song on the situation in Ghana.”
As critical as can be
with some aspects of life in Ghana, he is optimistic about the growth of
its music industry. “We just need a system to monitor the numbers that
we have,” he says, meaning that the market and audience is there, but
that it’s a difficult thing to quantify in a country where pirating
music is the rule. Fortunately, the means may be on their way: He points
out, for one, that Jay Z is working with Nigerian record labels to
bring their artists to his Tidal streaming platform. Currently,
Sarkodie’s own music is available on Deezer, which is not only a revenue
stream to him but an invaluable way of measuring his audience.
“I
think Africa is the next big thing, because I think Europe had their
share. America always had their share. We had this Psy guy from Asia. I
think we need some Africans now,” he says. His decision to launch
SarkCess Music shows how much he believes those words. He’s also not the
only one who is betting on African artists—and audiences. When Sarkodie
collaborated with rapper Ace Hood on the recent single “New Guy,” the
American artist sought him out because of his desire to connect with
African listeners and work with the best while doing so. “They
understand the numbers that we have now, so they want to collaborate,”
Sarkodie observes, referring to American rappers. Ace Hood held his own
on the slightly eccentric single, but one wonders how many other rappers
from the US would want to try keeping pace with Sarkodie.
By Beverly Bryan
