The Ghana Music Industry can now boast of a BET award but before the acknowledgment, the Hip Life journey has been very torrid. It took the ingenuity of certain individuals to sacrifice and hold the fort for the new crop of Hip Lifers.
This new crop of artistes without any doubt are benefiting greatly from the game. Most of them have acquired many properties and are well recognised.
Would it be cool to say that, ‘monkey dey work, baboon dey chop’? As in the ‘monkeys’ have toiled and worked for years and the ‘baboons’ are now reaping the benefits. This is not to say that, Ghana’s triumph at BET was a fluke.
Let me remind you. In this part of the world, we wait till the demise of a legend before we rave about them. Even though we may be privy to their exploits and achievements, we turn blind eye to them and wait till they are gone and then begin to sing good praises about them.
The artistes who began the Hip Life movement several years ago were the once responsible for Ghana’s triumph at the BET. It’s glaring that their continued effort to keep the genre which was undermined, called names and tagged as ‘don’t have a future’ going despite the challenges they faced.
Back in the Day, the music scene was such that, an artiste had to do a thorough research into whatever they want to sing about or lyrics they want to use in their songs. With a very good instrumentation, a classic song was churned out. Now what you need is a good beat and not unnecessarily good lyrics, then you can boast as a musician.
Back in the Day, an artiste has to wait for their time to record his or her songs and manage to get a hit. Now all you need is money, talent and passion is no more important.
Back in the Day, there weren’t many radio stations and even the few once didn’t take the Hip Life genre serious.
Back in the Day, people had real passion for what they do, even though some of them were in school, they starved themselves and saved to record their various hit songs. Now the passion is no more important, the fact that your friend is singing or rapping means if you have money to pay for studio section, you can join too.
Even most of the early starters slept in the studios for days to have their songs recorded.
They took quality time to write their lyrics. Even though their rap wasn’t a top notch, with the help of the sound engineers, they managed to churn out songs which are irreplaceable. At least it’s evident now.
Thanks to technology advancement, now musicians can sit in the comfort of their homes and upload audios online for people to download, upload their videos on YouTube to watch.
Back in the day, due to lack of technology, artistes had to resort to trekking to radio stations to plead for their CDs to be accepted. Whether it’s played or not is another problem.
Bola Ray who has been a major backbone for virtually all the real soldiers of the Hip Life game and his Empire Entertainment crew in association with MediaGH have set up an agenda to bring back the real hit makers who started the Hip Life journey for a major concert dubbed ‘Back in the Day’.
Back in the Day, Ghana experienced real hit makers whose songs are still relevant now. This goes to say that, it doesn’t matter how old a song is – a good song is a good song.
According to Bola Ray, the CEO of Empire Entertainment, this concert was borne out of his love for the game. Also since most of them are not active, the concert is a way of honouring and making sure they get something into their pockets.
The tall lists of artistes on the bill are the originator of Hip Life, Reggie Rockstone, Ex-Doe of ‘Comfort’ and ‘Maba’ fame, Chicago of ‘Wobeko’ fame, VIP, Batman (now Samini), TH4 Kwages, Buk Bak, T-Blaze of ‘Wo sisi ye wo ya’ fame, Akatakyie of ‘Odo sisi me’ fame, Tic Tac of ‘Philomena’ fame, Akyeame duo of Okyeame Kwame and Okyeame Quophi of ‘Mesan Aba’ fame, Obrafour and others.
Back in the Day is scheduled for September 1 at the Dome of the Accra International Conference Centre. Each of the artistes would be presented with a plaque on the night.
This is the unification of Hip Life’s biggest and real soldiers. You don’t have to miss it.