[FA Worldmusic] Liberia's Starving Rappers

[sarah wimer]

A world music story in an unexpected place--Slate.com:

Liberia's Starving Rappers
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Posted Friday, May 4, 2007, at 6:57 AM ET
http://www.slate.com/?id=2165338

MONROVIA, LiberiaJonathan Koffa, known to his fans as Takun J, wore fake
diamond earrings and a rhinestone-studded D&G necklace that was missing
most of its bling. One day in March, he and several other Liberian
rappers gathered around a plastic table next to a blazing strip of
asphalt in downtown Monrovia. Only a flimsy umbrella separated us from
the punishing midday sun, and the musicians sweated into their do-rags.

They were members of L.I.B. Records, one of Liberia's most popular rap
outfits, which is not a record label in the traditional sense but a group
of like-minded artists who sometimes perform together. Unlike the
American rappers they admired50 Cent, DMX, Jay-Ztheir lives lacked any
hint of glamour. Most were in their 20s and lived at home. They walked
everywhere, because in Liberia, even a rapper with three simultaneous
radio hits couldn't afford a bicycle. On nights when he ran out of food,
Takun J told me that he ate hot cereal with sugar before bed, just to
have something in his stomach.

In economic terms, they had a lot in common with almost everyone else in
their country, where 80 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a
day, and the unemployment rate hovers around 85 percent. They also shared
an experiential bond with the earliest practitioners of American hip-hop,
who rapped about urban poverty, violence, and desperation because they
had lived it. "You know how it was like around '92, '93 in the States,
around Tribe Called Quest, there wasn't no money in the game," said
Buckay Bantoe, an L.I.B. rapper who wore a Rastafarian knit cap over his
dreadlocks. "But say like around '96, '97, when Puff Daddy, certain
people started comin' in  the game took a turn. That's how it's going to
be here. That's how I see it. It's going to take off."

Like their American contemporaries, the L.I.B. rappers grew up on Big
Daddy Kane and "Rapper's Delight" and graduated to the Wu-Tang Clan and
the Roots. During Liberia's 14-year civil war, they fled the country or
hid in their homes to avoid being killed or conscripted by rival
factions. Now, they are trying to create a uniquely Liberian musical
genre in a place where no one seems able to agree on the definition of a
national culture. It's hard to go anywhere in Liberia without hearing
musicchurch choirs belting out gospel songs, rocked-up spirituals
blasting from big outdoor speakers, or tinny radios playing reggaebut
most of it isn't Liberian. Artists from Ghana and Senegal are popular,
and kids wear T-shirts emblazoned with the faces of Eminem and Tupac
Shakur.

The L.I.B. rappers call their music "hip-co," the "co" being short for
"colloqua." This is the Liberian vernacular, broken American English with
bits of indigenous tongues thrown in. It's the language of the street,
and Takun J and the other L.I.B. rappers choose subjects that resonate
with ordinary people. "If we see politicians doing crooked stuff, we
going to speak about it," Bantoe said. "We not going to let nobody stop
us from speaking truth in our music."

Takun J is 26, idealistic, and earnest. He sees music as a way of
countering injustice because, he told me, "The musician is also a
politician." When we spoke, he was working on a single about police
corruption. In Monrovia, poorly paid traffic cops routinely stop drivers
for imaginary violations and demand bribes. The song went, in part:

Policeman coming, the policeman running
The policeman can take sides when he see money 
The policeman not fair, policeman not right
Policeman judge your case, brother you'll be scared!

The song includes a plea to President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf to crack down
on corruption or face public outrage. Even though he believes his songs
can alter the status quo, he alludes to another widely held view:

Policeman not shamed, policeman can't change
Oh when you look at him, tell me how he will change? ...
Tell me now my people, tell me who we will trust
The police that we got, that doing that kind of stuff?

Takun J and the other L.I.B. rappers have plenty of listeners, but
they're not making money. There is only one distributor for full-length
albums in Liberia, they told me, and whenever they have enough material
for a CD, they sell the songs, rights and all, for several-thousand
dollars. They don't have much negotiating power, because the distributor
is the only game in town. "It's like we in slavery," Bantoe said. "We
working hard, and he just buying it for little or nothing."

They make a little money playing live, but sometimes money is not the
point. I watched them perform for free one afternoon on a beach in
Monrovia. The sky was silvery, and dozens of boys stood knee-deep in the
water, laughing and splashing each other with giant plumes of white
spray. The L.I.B. rappers launched into a song about a pretty girl whose
number they wanted, and a crowd of teenagers quickly formed around them,
pressing uncomfortably close. They listened intently and a little
desperately, like people who suspect that it may be a long time before
such pure enjoyment comes their way again.

from: Vanessa Gezari

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