The Hip Hop African

After listening to the song a couple times, African Hip Hop artist eMTee’s song “We Up” in my opinion was on the outskirts of the being a commercialized hip hop song. The artist rapped about his status, as he has come up in the world of hip hop. I feel as though this song would be a great song to input into NBA’s 2k, a short film, or even a cinematic film. I like how the artist incorporated his Native language with the English language, this to me Americanized the song, while keeping it’s original roots intact. The video portrayed visuals of families, friends, low income neighborhoods, and a bit of hope and happiness toward the new way of life for the artist and video’s main character. In comparison, African pop star D’banj, had a more romantic feel to his song. Like eMTee , D’banj kept his African roots in his music by having African rhythms in his music. I enjoyed both songs and feel as though they resemble hip hop and pop songs in American culture. Much of black hip hop and pop in America is surrounded around overcoming struggles, gaining wealth, or love. The videos were even similar to those of videos in America’s culture. EMTee’s video was similar to many street hip hop videos, while D’banj’s video gave me a more R&b video feel.