Hiplife is here to stay despite what goners like me think about it and it represents the Now Ghana music.

From its early days to now, the Hiplife or Rap (I wish sombody would tell me if the two are the same) has travelled through changes to be what it is now. In the early days most rappers saw it as a hobby, but more seriousness is being attached to the hiplife music.

Let us try to draw the profile of a typical rapper or "hiplifer". They are usually in the late teens or early to mid twenties, and they are SSS graduates who for obvious reasons have decided not to continue full time education. They usually start as a group and they strongly want to be  indentified with the roots :- ie is culture, hence the proliferation of native group names like Rap Awudifoo, Akohwifoo, Akromfoo etc, etc. They usually use Twi words that they themselves do not understand and they are not proficient in the Twi language, even though they choose that as a working medium.

The average rapper has only two songs which cannot make an album, hence the need to feature so many others on their albums to make it complete even though this situation can lead to serious legal problems in future. The songs are usually poems and they attach great importance rhymes for example: me kotoko nii ba, meko kotoku akoto koto. - they usually need someone with singing ability to sing their choruses.  This is the typical rapper; even though things are fast changing fast and with many enterpreneurs showing interest in Rap, they are hiring more seasoned musicians and others to correct these.

I have a lot of rap friends who believe that they will make it through music not education, but I read some statistics about all professional musicians worldwide.  It said only 12% of all professional musician worldwide ever make it to stardom; of this number, 50% make it through industry hype and packaging, 25% through luck, 15% through occultic powers and 10% through hard work.

So to the up and coming rappers I say get the school certtificate first so that when things go wrong, you can fall on it. Remember the Ghanaian sensation Rhian Benson, she got degrees from London School of Economics and Havard Universty before venturing music.(check from www.rhianbenson.com)