The main idea behind Hiplife music as revealed by the grandpapa

The grandpapa and originator of Ghanaian Highlife music, Reggie Rockstone, as part of the Made in Ghana Month celebration across the Global Media Alliance broadcast platforms, has shared on YFM the main idea that motivated his origination of the Hiplife music genre.
Speaking with Rev. Erskine on the Myd-Morning Radio Show, he revealed that the original concept behind Hiplife music was for Ghanaians to be able to express ourselves musically using our own language.
“I came home and I decided to use my own language to empower us so basically when you rap in your own language, be it Dagaati, Hausa, Twi or whatever and you put it over a hip-hop beat, it’s Hiplife. Hiplife is a hybrid because it’s hip from Hip-hop and life from Highlife”, he said.
According to him, Hiplife does not only have to be singing in a local dialect over a Hip-hop beat, but it could also be reversed, thus doing an English rap over a Highlife beat just like his old song ‘Keep your eyes on the road’ which was an all-English rap done over the legendary Alhaji K. Frimpong’s ‘Kyenkyem bi edi mewuo’ Highlife beat.
“All we wanted to do was empower the movement so that if you couldn’t speak English or you couldn’t rap in English, it wouldn’t matter because English is not our language. Yes, some of us have a great command over the English language but we want to utilize ourselves so we can express ourselves to our own people”, Reggie further explained.
Global Media Alliance Broadcasting Company has employed the whole month of September as the ‘Made in Ghana’ month and dedicated the month to promoting and encouraging the consumption of locally-made products.
This year’s celebration cuts across all the broadcast platforms Happy FM, eTV Ghana and across the Y-Triangle (YFM Accra, Kumasi and Takoradi), and is under the theme ‘Celebrating Ghana through Digital Innovations’.
By: Maureen Dedei Quaye