The Hiplife in Ghana ─ West African Indigenization of Hip-Hop

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.