The hiplife in Ghana : the West African indigenization of hip-hop

The Hiplife in Ghana explores one international site - Ghana, West Africa - where hip-hop music and culture have morphed over two decades into the hiplife genre of world music. It investigates hiplife music not merely as an imitation and adaptation of hip-hop, but as a reinvention of Ghana's century-old highlife popular music tradition. Author Halifu Osumare traces the process by which local hiplife artists have evolved a five-phased indigenization process that has facilitated a youth-driven transformation of Ghanaian society. She also reveals how Ghana's social shifts, facilitated by hiplife, have occurred within the country's 'corporate recolonization,' serving as another example of the neoliberal free market agenda as a new form of colonialism. Hiplife artists, we discover, are complicit with these global socio-economic forces even as they create counter-narratives that push aesthetic limits and challenge the neoliberal order. The Hiplife in Ghana explores one international site, Ghana, West Africa, where hip-hop music and culture has morphed over two decades into a whole new form of world music called hiplife. It investigates hiplife music not merely as an imitation and adaptation of hip-hop, but as a revision of Ghana's own century-old popular music called highlife. Local hiplife artists have evolved a five-phased indigenization process that has facilitated a dynamic youth agency transforming Ghanaian society. However these social shifts, facilitated by hiplife, have occurred within Ghana's 'corporate recolonization, ' serving as another example of neoliberalism's global free market agenda that has become a new form of colonialism. The text examines hiplife artists' complicity with these socio-economic forces, while also creating counter-hegemonic projects that challenge this socio-economic context and push aesthetics limits at the same time Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction: “Every Hood Has Its Own Style”....Pages 1-27 “Making An African Out of the Computer”: Globalization and Indigenization in Hiplife....Pages 29-81 Empowering the Young: Hiplife’s Youth Agency....Pages 83-117 “Society of the Spectacle”: Hiplife and Corporate Recolonialization....Pages 119-158 “The Game”: Hiplife’s Counter-Hegemonic Discourse....Pages 159-181 Back Matter....Pages 183-219