Back to Basics – AKA’s “Jika”

South African rapper, AKA, is a more westernized hip-hop artist from the Mother Land. His newest video, “Jika”, which was released in late January, discusses less of African culture and plays more of an interest on AKA’s love life. It is the featured artist, Yanga Chief, who incorporates African culture in it through the language he uses in the chorus, as well as the bongo beat that’s played amongst the lyrics. These things, specifically, are how AKA represents his country in the music, especially because this rapper is one who tends to stray away from African culture in his music. 
            The music video shows AKA and Yanga Chief at a nursing home, trying to court a woman into dating AKA. The two rappers are shown slowly walking and dancing in a comedic way. The way that the diaspora could be represented is mainly through their representations of black culture. For one, we see the rapper courting a black woman, keeping his relationship within black culture and the black diaspora. In the song he also talks about how he loves the woman’s melanin, which is also a way of uprising not just black women, but specifically dark women. This is a song for black women, but it also celebrates black women, and black on-black relationships. The video not only does this, but incorporates some specific African culture dance moves as well. We see how the artist is leaning towards his roots in his recent music, which is something a lot of artist originally criticized him for going against!

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