Tag: dakar
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The Face of Senegal Hip Hop: Samba Peuzzi
As we embark on this new year, the Senegalese hip-hop scene is evolving in a positive light. It is so important to recognize the talented MCs who have come before who helped shape the Senegalese hip-hop scene into what it is today. It is just as important to recognize the young faces in the hipRead…
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Y’en a marre and Coronavirus: Not just the opposition
Senegal’s Y’en a Marre movement, which roughly translates in casual French to “fed up,” was formed first in 2011 during broad-based protests against the regime of the former President Abdoulaye Wade. This group’s initial concern was to protest against rising electricity prices in Dakar, but their scope quickly expanded to become a mass mobilization movementRead…
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Didier Awadi’s “Mama kitoko” (feat. Marie Ndiaye)
“Mama kitoko” is a 2020 single by Senegalese rap legend Didier Awadi. Awadi was born on August 11, 1969 in Dakar, Senegal. He is of Beninese and Cape Verdean descent. Awadi began his music career in the early 1980s when the hip hop scene in Dakar was in its early stages. In 1984 he startedRead…
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Excuse my Wolof
My last article discussed Youssoupha’s album NGRTD. While reading the lyrics of his song entourage, I realized Youssoupha discussed many of the same themes MC Solaar touches on in his early albums produced some 20 years ago. While you could write a novel on the thematic similarities of African hip hop produced two decades apart,Read…
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Dakar’s Female MCs and the Power of the Cyp(her)
In a hip-hop scene as developed and competitive as Senegal’s, the cypher continues to act as a platform by which talented, young rappers make their debut. The fast-paced intensity of a hip-hop cypher is the perfect way for new artists on the scene to prove to their worth to the public. And in a societyRead…
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Toussa, or all-inclusive
Who is Astou Gaye, and how did she set the contemporary precedent for aspiring female rappers in the banlieus surrounding Dakar? Better known by her stage name Toussa Senerap, Astou began her career calling out a highly-patriarchal Senegalese culture that withholds respect for women in both marriage and the hip-hop industry. There is no questioningRead…
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On the Other Side of the Tracks with Gokh-Bi System’s “Pikine”
New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Detroit— name a city in America and there’s sure to be artists that represent the vibrant hip-hop culture that inhabits it. The same holds true across the Atlantic in the West African nation of Senegal, and you’d be hard-pressed to find another city that embodies hip-hop culture as much asRead…
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MHD en sa Patrie
Mohammed Sylla (MHD) performed in front of thousands of Senegalese in Dakar in December 2017. This concert, staged in front of the 49-meter-tall African Renaissance Monument, united the international phenomenon MHD with domestically-popular Senegalese hip-hop artists in an evening ripe with music, dance, and humor.