As we celebrate the birthday of hiphop (44years) here a history of Nigeria hiphop
The Nigerian Music Industry is yet to attain a colossal status wherewith it will be called an industry indeed. However, taking into cognizance the obvious tendencies of a mega industry, one can either choose to look at the cup as half-filled or half empty. A genre that has come to thrive over the years is the Nigerian Hip Hop which has informed most of the developments in the Nigerian Music. In this post, we shall be taking a brief tour of this 30 years old genre and how it had evolved overtime.

Sound on Sound (1988) was the first Hip-Hop and rap group that I came across in Nigeria due to their accrued popularity. Therefore, like some of Nigerian Hip Hop critics and commentators, I was under the assumption that the group pioneered Nigerian Hip Hop and Rap Music. This assumption is somewhat true. This is because Sound on Sound, which included Mr. Kool (yes; same Mr. Kool), Ebony Laoye, Monica Omorodion, Troy “Jedi” Williams and Ron “Scratch” McBean (Scratch is Oye AKD’s friend by the way) were the first Hip Hop and Rap group to make a full-fledged rap album produced in Nigeria. However, a decade barely passed after the birth of Hip Hop in the blocks of South Bronx, New York when Nigerian artistes caught the bug.



[audio:https://www.360nobs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Sound-on-Sound-–-I_m-African360nobs.com_1.mp3
titles=Sound on Sound – I_m African
One can directly relate this to the ripple effect which the success of “rapper’s delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang had in this part of the world barely 2 years before the first rap record was produced in Nigeria.

[audio:https://www.360nobs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/SugarHill-Gang-Rappers-Delight.mp3|titles=SugarHill Gang – Rappers Delight]
It is little wonder Nigerian Hip Hop has become one of the nation’s vanguard in the international entertainment community.

The first rap music in Nigeria emanated in 1981 from the mind of a protesting On-Air personality who decided to throw a dagger at the disco rap trend which suddenly became the rave of the moment. With the release of “The Way I Feel Rap“, Ron “Ronnie” Ekundayo became the proponent of hip hop and rap music in Nigeria. His album, The Way I Feel consisted of similar Kris Okotie‘s pop tunes, just like Run DMC jumped on rock tunes in 1983 and beyond.



[audio:https://www.360nobs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Ronnie-The-Way-I-Feel-Rap360nobs.com_.mp3
titles=Ronnie – The Way I Feel Rap

Apparently, he was inspired by the singer and decided to add rapper to his title which previously included Television presenter and DJ amidst the others mentioned above. One would expect Ron to have stuck around and defend his title as a pioneer of Rap music in Nigeria (and possibly Africa) but with his one-hit-wonder, he already earned his place in history.

Other proponents of the first era include: Dizzy K. Falola, Rapmaster Lexy Mella (who could neither rap well nor rap much), Dili I. Jukson, I.C. Rock (who pushed conscious music), and so on.

Rap music in Nigeria during this period was mainly vague expressions and predominantly mindless chants which has been adapted poorly from the more artistic American counterparts, which some of today’s rappers will refer to as wack.

In 1991, the trio of Terry, Mouth MC and Junior, with the release of “Which One You Dey?” gave birth to what was going to become the trend of the second era of Nigerian Hip Hop and rap music. Unlike most of their predecessors who were “American rappers wannabe”, Emphasis gave birth to the genre “Nigerian Hip Hop” by choosing to deliver their lyrics in pidgin which is the true language of the streets in Nigeria. They delivered their lyrics in a lay back flow and with elements of drama.



[audio:https://www.360nobs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Emphasis-Which-One-You-Dey360nobs.mp3|titles=Emphasis – Which One You Dey]
This ushered in the second decade of Hip Hop in Nigeria, an era on which little or next to nothing has been documented on (to my utmost surprise). It’s appalling that on a few Nigerian social networks and blogs, the “bloggers”, music critics and Hip Hop scholars always refer to the duo of Junior and Pretty as the pioneer of Hip Hop in Nigeria when in actual fact they only took off from where Emphasis left off.

That said, Junior and Pretty took Hip-Hop mainstream with their comical pidgin style of rapping which was adapted for the streets of Nigeria. This quickly became a prominent attribute of the second decade of Hip Hop.



[audio:https://www.360nobs.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Junior-Pretty-Monika.mp3]

Unlike the first era, they showed more originality by owning the art and making it Nigerian. Even the instrumentations were heavy on indigenous content. Truthfully, Reggae and Disco music ruled supreme in Nigeria between the 80s and late 90s and due to the success of the likes of Majek Fashek, Mandators, Kris Okotie, Edna Ogoli (my favourite) and so on, most promoters and labels (both foreign and local) were focused on the reggae artistes as they were the money makers at this period.

As a result, the Hip Hop genre suffered in terms of prominence and lucrativeness. Some artistes had to inculcate the reggae culture into their Hip Hop genre; for instance – Daniel Wilson aka Mr Raggamuffin, Blackky and even Oritz Wiliki had to infuse rap bars into their songs.

Other rappers who stood out in this era include: Cashman Davies, Weird MC, Seyi Shodimu, Baba Dee, Zaaki, Felix and Moses, etc.

Most of these artistes fizzled out as Nigerians still weren’t ready to accept Hip-Hop over Pop and Reggae although some of them re-emerge much later in the following era. The late 90s saw an emergence of young Hip-Hop acts pop up everywhere from Trybesmen to Ruff, Rugged & Raw to Maintain, Blackface was the rapper in Plantainshun Boiz; and just like Emphasis in the first decade, a 3man group called The Remedies emerged towards the end of the second era with the smash hit “Shakomo” in 1997, and re-ignited the Hip-Hop fire in the Nigerian Hip Hop arena.

To read more ->> https://www.360nobs.com/2012/07/history-of-nigerian-hip-hop-a-tale-of-3-decades/

Nice one OP

Nice one... Underrated post