Why hip-life music is no longer prominent in Ghana – Kofi Mole explains

For some time now, the conversation has been whether hiplife, a combination of Ghanaian traditional highlife music and hip-hop, is dead or not.

While many claim it is still alive but lingering, singer Edward Kofi Agyemang Amoah, widely known as Kofi Mole, says it's completely missing from the system.

The hip-hop singer revealed that the genre’s death is a result of low patronage.

"I don’t know; maybe it’s because we don’t have artists that currently make mention of hiplife in their music, unlike Reggie Rockstone, who persistently made mention of hiplife in his music," he revealed.

In a sit-down with HypeMan Ferggy on Accra-based Y97.9FM’s Friday Night Mix, Mole claimed that the influx of internet has lifted the American hip-hop genre so high to an extent that it has overshadowed the hip-life genre.

"Since the internet season came, we got so exposed to hip-hop and outside and the music outside of Ghana, their culture, and everything; The young ones who came up now tried to vibe with the hip-hop culture, I mean the hip-hop from America’s culture," he alluded.

Reginald Osei, known in music circles as Reggie Rockstone is touted by some as the originator of hip-hop; others disagree.

Nonetheless, the origins of Ghanaian hip hop date back to the 1980s, with performers such as K.K. Kabobo and Gyedu Blay Ambolley.

As early as 1973, Ambolley released his first record, "Simigwado," a semi-rap in Fante-style highlife that showed him performing highlife variations with fast-spoken, poetic lyrics.

Ambolley would go on to be hailed as the father of rap, not only in Ghana but around the world. Over time, Ghanaians became influenced by American hip hop, reggae, and dance hall.

There was an emerging underground hip hop collective in the capital Accra.