African Hip Hop
Hip hop music has been popular in Africa since the early 1980s due to widespread American influence. In 1985 hip hop reached Senegal, a French-speaking country in West Africa. Some of the first Senegalese rappers were M.C. Lida, M.C. Solaar, and Positive Black Soul, who mixed rap with Mbalax, a type of West African pop music. An early South African group was Black Noise. They began as a graffiti and breakdance crew in Cape Town until they started emceeing in 1989.
There also have been groups in Tanzania and other countries that emceed before 1989, although it is not very well known. During the late 1980s-early 1990s rap started to escalate all over Africa. Each region had a new type of style of hip hop. Rap elements are also found in Kwaito, a new genre based on house music which developed in South Africa in the 1990s.
Read more about African Hip Hop: Algeria, Angola, Botswana, Cameroon, Côte D'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Madagascar, Malawi, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Famous quotes containing the words african, hip and/or hop:
“The African race evidently are made to excel in that department which lies between the sensuousness and the intellectual—what we call the elegant arts. These require rich and abundant animal nature, such as they possess; and if ever they become highly civilised, they will excel in music, dancing and elocution.”
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)
“Rituals are important. Nowadays it’s hip not to be married. I’m not interested in being hip.”
—John Lennon (1940–1980)
“I have tried being surreal, but my frogs hop right back into their realistic ponds.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)