The final chapter
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| Reggie, all grown up but still looking young in his 50's |
After the release of Rockstone's first and second albums, a lot of young artiste started to take hiplife and run away with it, among the many who did this are the group Akyeame. Rockstone called this group as the first to ever release an album that lived up to his precepts when he started hiplife. Akyeame succeeded in excellently rapping in the local Ghanaian Twi dialect over traditional highlife (traditional Ghanaian music) rhythms with hip-hop undertones, something which greatly impressed Reggie.
After the success of Akyeame, other authentic hiplife artistes that followed in that vein of excellence included Sydney and Obrafour; one artiste who stood tall for Reggie Ossei. Reggie calls Obrafour the KRS1 of Ghanaian rap music. 'Obrafuor's first album took the hiplife game to a whole new level' says Reggie who also had some praises for the hiplife group VIP--he describes them as the WuTang Clan of early hiplife era in Ghana.
Looking back today, the godfather of hiplife believes his invention has lived up to expectation because it's still very relevant and has generated a lot of excitement. Ghana as a nation has never had a youth oriented movement this big evolving in its history as a nation. Hiplife greatly inspires a lot of young musicians all over Africa as well. Reggie Ossei knows 'when people talk about Ghana and they mention Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's cocoa and gold wealth and other historic icons of Ghana… hiplife will certainly come up too'.
Like every other great invention, hiplife's greatest threat according to its founder is the lack of recognition from the Ghana music industry that will put this genre in the rightful place to further encourage its growth. The other threat to hiplife is that even though its quantity has become enormous, the quality is sometimes poor. The government needs to step in to accord hiplife the respect it deserves because even though the genre continues to grow, it has been left to itself and this to Reggie Ossei is unfortunate.
Watch the trailer of Living The Hiplife, a movie about the genre and its founding father.
To right this 'wrong', the hiplife creator has set himself the task of organizing the first ever hiplife music awards in Ghana with the sole objective of singling out authentic artistes of the genre on the grounds of how long and relevant they have become in the hiplife game. With this in mind, Reggie feels people like Sarkodie; presently the fastest lyricist in Ghana today and a host of other up and coming artistes hailing from Ghana's port city of Tema are worthy of mentioning. Artistes like D'Black, Kwaw Kesse, Dr. Cryme, R2Bees and many others are making Ghana proud in Africa and the world wherever they go touring the world.
Efforts are being made on the part of the grandpapa of hiplife to garner support, interest and sponsorship for his first ever hiplife music awards which is going to be held at a yet to be announced date and venue in Ghana. The major drive behind this awards is to afford Reginald Ossei the opportunity to express his deepest gratitude to all because he believes he couldn't have done this all by himself.
The first and most important thing that is going to be addressed in the maiden hipllfe music awards by the founder of the genre is to 'acknowledge and congratulate anyone who ever picked up a microphone and rapped any kind of music that is akin to hiplife or hip-hop'. Reggie says he will continue to consult with firms and individuals to make sure that the maiden hiplife music awards is done rightly.
Did you know: before his music career kicked off, Rockstone was a well respected martial arts (Tae Kwon Do) champion, he also has a keen eye for interior decoration, something that is evident in how the décor is set up at his night club--Rockstone's Office, which is located inside Ghana's capital city Accra.
It might also surprise some fans to know that growing up Reggie was also a superb break dancer. Reggie believes hip-hop's real roots is strongly inside Africa and asked hip-hop superstars who visit and perform anywhere in Africa to have high esteem and respect for the continent and its people because 'as a matter of fact, this is where the inspiration for the hip-hop we see today really begun'.
