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African state of mind: hip hop, identity and the effects of Africa Rising

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Content 1

African State of Mind:
Hip Hop, Identity and the Effects of Africa Rising
Lorien R. Hunter
Bryan Singer Department of Cinema and Media Studies
Doctor of Philosophy
University of Southern California
Conferred on December 13, 2017

Faculty of the USC Graduate School
2

For Yvonne W. Hunter

The Original #1 Fan

3
Acknowledgements

Six years ago, I happened across an article on Africanhiphop.com discussing the release
of American rapper J Cole’s freshman album Cole World (2011). I had been following his career
for a couple of years and was excited to get my hands on more of his music; however, after
securing my copy of the album via the Apple Music Store, I turned my attention back to the
website that had given me this information. What exactly is African hip hop, I wondered? And
what is its relationship to Black American artist J Cole? To get answers to these questions, I
began digging through the website, which only led to new questions and more digging. By the
end of the semester, I had written my first paper on Africanhiphop.com, focusing on its
conceptualization of the African Diaspora, which started me on the long and bumpy road that has
now culminated into this dissertation project.
I do not remember whether anyone ever tried to convey to me just how hard and bumpy
this road would be; however, I am certain that if they did, my naiveté prevented me from truly
hearing them. Instead, I started off as most doctoral students do—filled to the brim with too
much confidence and barely any idea of where I was actually headed. Despite these significant
shortcomings, my gracious committee members Taj Frazier, Kara Keeling, Josh Kun and
committee chair Anikó Imre all bravely agreed to undertake the journey with me, acting as my
guides, my champions, my critics and along the way, becoming my friends. Anikó’s office,
especially, became a sanctuary to me, where our conversations always began with an offer of
chocolate and a chuckle over my grandfather’s most recent antics. The chairs in the offices of
Alicia White, Bill Whittington and Todd Boyd also became some of my most frequented and
familiar places, as they were always willing to lend an ear, give advice, or answer one more of
my seemingly endless supply of questions.
4
One of the most challenging aspects of this research project turned out to be its data
collection, which took me to three different continents and numerous other virtual spaces. Were
it not for the openness and generosity of individuals like Adam Haupt, Ade James, Akin, Angelo,
Camiël, CC Smith, Culmin Matthew, Derick Neal, Eitan Prince, Emile Jansen, Hishaam, Ian
Keulder, Jade Trueman, Jason Fraser, Leila Dougan, Lisa Burnell, Margolite Williams, Mariska
April, Msa Mapiliba, Roger Steffens, Rushay Booysen, Sara Chitambo, Schaik Hewitt, Sebenzile
Zalabe, Shameema Williams, Shane Heusdens, Siphiwo Kobese, Sky, the late Stephen Beale,
Stephen Sontag, Thomas Gesthuizen, Tiffany Kung, Tom Schnabell and Tseliso Monaheng, as
well as those attached to organizations like Kristin J. Craun with the University of Southern
California internal review board, Lindsay Wicomb with the City of Cape Town, Meredith Drake
Reitan and the Research Enhancement Fellowship Program with the University of Southern
California Graduate School, Nico with the Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, Zanele
Matshotyana with Smart Cape, the entire staff at the International Institute of Social History in
Amsterdam and the Musicology Archive at the University of California- Los Angeles, and
countless others, this task would have proved impossible.
As is often the case with challenging circumstances, I formed a close bond with many of
my colleagues who found themselves struggling along similar paths. Late nights and a little too
much wine with Ashley Young, Ayana McNair, Dayna Chatman, Dominic Matheny, Garrett T.
Thompson, Janeane Anderson, Jessica Young, Jheanelle Brown, Kwynn Perry, Leah Aldridge,
Manouchka Labouba, Stephanie Hoover-Yeung and Thomas Carter are by far some of my
fondest memories from the last six years. I am also thankful to my cohort sisters Katherine
Madden and Heather Blackmore, as well as my writing partners Cecilia Stepp, Pat Alford-
Keating, Rachel Russel and Shieva Davarian, whose constant presence alongside me during my
5
entire graduate school career has made even the most difficult parts of the process seem
survivable. My brilliant fellow adventurer Talia Squires not only inspired me to finish the project
but also showed me that I could have a blast while doing it, while the frequent work sessions and
late-night conversations I shared with Sangeeta Marwah amidst the ups and downs of this
process were pivotal to my success and productivity in the Bay Area. I also want to express my
deep sense of gratitude to the many brilliant minds I exchanged ideas with at conferences over
the years, especially Fungai Machirori, Mark V. Campbell, Megan Murph, Murray Foreman,
Shola Adenekan, Vanessa Plumly and Victor Vicente.
Throughout it all, I have been lucky enough to have the love and understanding of my
family, especially my auntie Donna Hunter and brother Sander Hunter who have both been
through the doctoral process before and were thus invaluable sources of encouragement,
empathy and understanding. Thank you very much also to my mother Karen Stowe for helping
me proof read this entire document and root out typos, since we both know that I am not now,
nor will ever be, a speller. On the day of my defense I was blown away by the number of family
and friends who came from all over the country to show their support, including my father
Robert Hunter, auntie Kim Hunter, uncle Ray Davis, auntie Julia Davis, friends Jessica Arline
and Jessica Koslow, and many others whose names have already been mentioned.
Thank you!
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
THE FACE OF AFRICAN HIP HOP: AFROPOLITANS, CHEETAHS AND THE RISING GENERATION 9
HIP HOP AND THE AFROPOLITAN IDENTITY 24
THE STUDIES 30
CHAPTER 2
WORD TO YOUR MOTHER(LAND):
DIASPORIZATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF AFRICAN HIP HOP 37
A NEW AFRICAN DIASPORA 44
DIASPORA, ITS PRACTICE & THE RISE OF AFRICAN HIP HOP 49
SURROGATING IN THE NETHERLANDS 60
IDENTITY IN DIASPORA 68
CONCLUSIONS ON DIASPORIZATION 74
CHAPTER 3
LIVE FROM SOUTH AFRICA: THE ROLE OF DIGITIZATION IN COMMUNITY FORMATION 77
BUILDING A HIP HOP COMMUNITY 81
GOING ONLINE 89
THE PARADOX OF SUCCESS 97
CONCLUSIONS ON DIGITIZATION 125
CHAPTER 4
AFRICA IS THE NEW BLACK: COMMERCIALIZING AFRICAN IDENTITY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST
CENTURY 129
THE ROOTS OF COOL 140
OKAY AFRICAN COOL 144
EFFECTS OF THE CORE 149
ACCESS AND POWER 153
AFROPOLITAN IDENTITY IN YOUR EARBUDS 160
CONCLUSIONS ON COMMERCIALIZATION 168
CHAPTER 5
MIND OVER MATTER: THE FUTURE OF AFROPOLITANISM, RISING AND IDENTITY 170
THE RISING FACTOR 174
WORKS CITED 179

7
Table of Figures

FIGURE 1.1 ....................................................................................................................................... 9
FIGURE 1.2 ..................................................................................................................................... 10
FIGURE 1.3 ..................................................................................................................................... 12
FIGURE 1.4 ..................................................................................................................................... 13
FIGURE 2.1 ..................................................................................................................................... 37
FIGURE 2.2 ..................................................................................................................................... 39
FIGURE 2.3 ..................................................................................................................................... 54
FIGURE 2.4 ..................................................................................................................................... 56
FIGURE 2.5 ..................................................................................................................................... 58
FIGURE 2.6 ..................................................................................................................................... 60
FIGURE 2.7 ..................................................................................................................................... 61
FIGURE 2.8 ..................................................................................................................................... 65
FIGURE 2.9 ..................................................................................................................................... 66
FIGURE 2.10 ................................................................................................................................... 70
FIGURE 2.11 ................................................................................................................................... 72
FIGURE 3.1 ..................................................................................................................................... 78
FIGURE 3.2 ..................................................................................................................................... 84
FIGURE 3.3 ..................................................................................................................................... 91
FIGURE 3.4 ..................................................................................................................................... 92
FIGURE 3.5 ..................................................................................................................................... 93
FIGURE 3.6 ..................................................................................................................................... 98
FIGURE 3.7 ..................................................................................................................................... 99
FIGURE 3.8 ................................................................................................................................... 101
FIGURE 3.9 ................................................................................................................................... 103
FIGURE 3.10 ................................................................................................................................. 108
FIGURE 3.11 ................................................................................................................................. 111
FIGURE 3.12 ................................................................................................................................. 113
FIGURE 3.13 ................................................................................................................................. 116
FIGURE 3.14 ................................................................................................................................. 119
FIGURE 3.15 ................................................................................................................................. 120
FIGURE 3.16 ................................................................................................................................. 121
FIGURE 3.17 ................................................................................................................................. 121
FIGURE 3.18 ................................................................................................................................. 124
FIGURE 4.1 ................................................................................................................................... 129
FIGURE 4.2 ................................................................................................................................... 130
FIGURE 4.3 ................................................................................................................................... 131
FIGURE 4.4 ................................................................................................................................... 134
FIGURE 4.5 ................................................................................................................................... 135
FIGURE 4.6 ................................................................................................................................... 132
FIGURE 4.7 ................................................................................................................................... 136
FIGURE 4.8 ................................................................................................................................... 146
FIGURE 4.9 ................................................................................................................................... 147
FIGURE 4.10 ................................................................................................................................. 148
FIGURE 4.11 ................................................................................................................................. 150
8
FIGURE 4.12 ................................................................................................................................. 151
FIGURE 4.13 ................................................................................................................................. 152
FIGURE 4.14 ................................................................................................................................. 156
FIGURE 4.15 ................................................................................................................................. 157
FIGURE 4.16 ................................................................................................................................. 166
FIGURE 5.1 ................................................................................................................................... 170
FIGURE 5.2 ................................................................................................................................... 175
FIGURE 5.3 ................................................................................................................................... 178
9
Chapter 1
The Face of African Hip Hop: Afropolitans, Cheetahs and The Rising Generation

Figure 1.1
1

Samuel Bazawule was born in Accra, Ghana in 1982 (Figure 1.1). When he was around
ten years old, Bazawule encountered his first hip hop song, which was on a cassette tape his
older brother had brought home with him from school. As he explains:
I remember it like it was yesterday. My older brother had just returned from his freshman
year of secondary school and the loud engine of my father’s old Nissan Stanza pulling
into the compound had sent us all rushing to welcome him. Amidst my parents [sic]
chatter about his grades and how he’d lost weight, my brother signaled me to follow him.
He pulled out a Sony Walkman and told me he had a new dance to teach me. I can’t
remember exactly what he called it, only that it was similar to the running man. The
soundtrack to that dance was a sound I had never heard before: ‘Hip-Hop music.’ I spent
the days that followed filled with immense curiosity, digging into this new sound. Years
later, I would come to learn the names of the artists on that cassette tape: Big Daddy
Kane, Rakim, KRS One, Salt & Pepa, and Public Enemy. This was my introduction to a
culture that changed my life.
2

1
Image by Jahse, obtained from “Blitz the Ambassador, Native Sun (Embassy MVMT),” Rock Paper Scissors,
Accessed July 30, 2017, http://archive.rockpaperscissors.biz/index.cfm/fuseaction/current.media/project_id/556.cfm
2
Blitz the Ambassador, “The African Hip-Hop Generation Arrives,” Africa Is A Country, April 28, 2014, Accessed
July 30, 2017, http://africasacountry.com/2014/04/the-african-hip-hop-generation-arrives/
10
Following this introduction, Bazawule immersed himself in hip hop, first as an impassioned fan
and later as a budding artist. Adopting the moniker Blitz the Ambassador, Bazawule began
performing in local talent shows around Accra. In 2000, Blitz was discovered by Ghanaian
producer Hammer of the Last Two, who featured him in a song called “Deeba,” which won Blitz
the title “Best New Artist of the Year” at the Ghana Music Awards.
The following year, Blitz moved to the United States to attend Kent State University in
Ohio, where he graduated a few years later with a bachelor’s degree in business. While working
towards this degree, Blitz continued to develop his skills as a rapper through frequent live
performances, and released his first EP Soul Rebel in 2004. After graduation, Blitz moved to
New York City to pursue his music career. Since this move, he has released several new EPs and
four full-length albums. Remarkably, in all cases, these productions have been made
independently without the financial backing or guidance of a major record label. Consequently,
each is highly reflective of Blitz’s own evolution, both as a developing artist and as an African
living abroad.

Figure 1.2
3

3
Album cover for Stereotype (2009) obtained from “Stereotype | Blitz the Ambassador,” Bandcamp, August 4,
2009, Accessed July 30, 2017, https://blitztheambassador.bandcamp.com/album/stereotype
11
Blitz’s first album, Stereotype, was released in 2009. Its simple yet provocative black and
white cover artwork is highly reflective of the music contained inside (Figure 1.2). The twelve-
track compilation is filled with jazzy samples of horns, pianos, high-hats and stringed
instruments that are woven together to create classic boom-bap beats, giving it a deliciously
nostalgic old school feel. The lyrical content of the album complements these characteristics,
espousing an underground New York City vibe that offers poignant social commentary using
intricate rhythmic and rhyming patterns.
Notably, despite the album’s labeling, which points to both “world music” and “hiplife”
4

categories,
5
Stereotype draws little attention to Blitz’s Africanness. As was characteristic of most
early African hip hop music, throughout the album Blitz rhymes entirely in English, often while
adopting a Black American accent. Moreover, beyond the occasional reference to well-known
African figures like Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, the subject matter of Stereotype is
also largely centered on American topics. For example, in “Home,” Blitz highlights the
experiences of three characters that are well-known in the United States: an old man in Louisiana
who lived through Hurricane Katrina, a young man from the inner city who joined the US
military and fought in Iraq, and a young Mexican woman attempting to cross the border into the
United States. In each instance, these references placate to the American listener, creating a
familiar world in the music that speaks directly to Blitz’s audience in New York City. However,
in this way Stereotype projects an American perspective that allows these listeners to presume it
is also Blitz’s own, thereby effectively sublimating his national and cultural identities.
6

4
Hiplife is a hybrid form of hip hop that originated in Ghana, which combined the practices of traditional American
hip hop with Ghanaian highlife music.
5
Please see “Stereotype | Blitz the Ambassador,” Bandcamp, August 4, 2009, Accessed July 30, 2017,
https://blitztheambassador.bandcamp.com/album/stereotype
6
Historically, this has been a common approach for rappers with an African identity who are attempting to
crossover into the United States market. Other notable examples include Chamillionaire, who was born in Houston,
12

Figure 1.3
7

Blitz’s second album, Native Sun (2011), however, diverges significantly from this earlier
practice. Although the bright brass instrumentation and classic boom-bap style still features
prominently within his sophomore album, these characteristics are complimented with new
aesthetic choices that purposefully and unmistakably articulate an African identity. Perhaps most
notably, this shift is evident in the incorporation of African languages, such as in the song
“Akwaaba” where Blitz rhymes entirely in Twi. The subject matter Blitz touches on in Native
Sun is also decidedly more African-centered, as is, for example, indicated by song titles like
“Dear Africa” and “Accra City Blues.” The incorporation of traditional instrumentation similarly
conveys a feeling of Africanness, which is further referenced by other aesthetic choices like
dense polyrhythmic melodies and collective performance. Even the album’s artwork (shown
above in Figure 1.3), takes up a more discernable African aesthetic, which is characterized by,
among other things, textiles with repetitive, symmetrical geometric designs. Thus, much like the
evolution of African hip hop music itself, Blitz’s second album reflects a period of artistic and
cultural transformation, marked by genre hybridity and experimentation.

Texas to a Nigerian father and Black American mother, and Wale who is also Nigerian but was born in Washington
D.C.
7
Album cover for Native Sun (2011) obtained from “Native Sun | Jakarta Records,” Bandcamp, May 1, 2011,
Accessed July 30, 2017, https://jakartarecords-label.bandcamp.com/album/native-sun
13

Figure 1.4
8

Three years later, on April 28, 2014,
9
Blitz released his third full-length album,
Afropolitan Dreams. As is evident in the cover artwork shown in Figure 1.4 above, this project
was, in many ways, a continuation of the cultural merger Blitz had initiated in his second album.
The use of a live band and incorporation of both Western and African instrumentation continued
to feature prominently in this third effort, as did the engagement with African languages and
content. However, these blends often felt more organic and less abrupt than was true of his
earlier work, once again mirroring the development of African hip hop music more generally.
In part, the coherence of Blitz’s third album stems from its organization and thematic
structure, which employs skits and interludes commonly used in American hip hop during the
late 1980s and early 1990s to create a world that is further animated by sound effects and Blitz’s
lyrical storytelling. The interlude “Traffic Jam,” for example, opens with ambient sounds of
street vendors, passing vehicles and honking horns, before the crackle of an old radio enters the

8
Album Cover for Afropolitan Dreams (2014). Image sourced from “Afropolitan Dreams | Jakarta Records,”
Bandcamp, April 28, 2014, Accessed July 7, 2017, https://jakartarecords-label.bandcamp.com/album/afropolitan-
dreams
9
This is the release date provided by Jakarta Records on the album’s Bandcamp page. However, other dates are also
listed as the release date of the album, including April 29, 2014, as found on iTunes and April 25, 2014, as found via
google. However, this earlier date could not be substantiated with any other source; therefore, the next verifiable
date, posted on Bandcamp, is used.
14
foreground as it searches the airwaves. Suddenly, an electric base and guitar, baritone saxophone
and drums break through the static with an energetic melody, which is then overtaken by a male
radio announcer’s voice welcoming listeners to another beautiful morning in Accra. Here, much
as throughout the rest of the album, these layered sounds create rich sonic textures that blossom
into vivid and almost tangible spaces, allowing listeners to experience the world through Blitz’s
eyes (or rather, his ears). In this way, Afropolitan Dreams weaves what Blitz describes as “a new
African story,”
10
which is one heavily centered on movement, relationships and identity.
The experience of movement, above all else, is the central thematic structure in Blitz’s
new African story. The opening track “The Arrival,” for example, which begins with the clatter
of a city train, fades out to reveal sounds of a United States immigration officer at the airport as
she processes Blitz’s entry into the country. A few songs later, in “Call Waiting,” Blitz is back at
the airport again using a calling card to speak with his son in New York, before his mother
interrupts on the other line phoning him from Ghana. In “One Way Ticket” and “Make You No
Forget” Blitz speaks about the importance of maintaining his sense of connection with Africa
(thereby implying current feelings of distance from it), while in “Dollar and a Dream” he
recounts his evolution as an MC traveling from Ghana to the United States. Throughout the
album, the sound of airplanes, automobiles and trains are used as a backdrop to these vignettes,
which are punctuated with meditations on distance, travel, Africa, identity and migration.
Notably, Blitz is not the only African artist to engage these topics in recent years. In
2011, for example, Ghanaian rapper M.anifest released an album entitled Immigrant Chronicles:
Coming to America, which similarly speaks of persistent travel and featured songs like
“Motherland” and “Coming to America.” In 2012, Brooklyn-based Nigerian rapper Fore released

10
Jesse Brent, “Afropolitan Dreaming with Blitz the Ambassador,” Afripop Worldwide, May 13, 2014, Accessed
July 9, 2017, http://www.afropop.org/18376/afropolitan-dreaming-with-blitz-the-ambassador/
15
the album Going Back is Not the Same as Staying, which offers a darker take on being an
African in motion, articulating a deep sense of loneliness and isolation brought about by this
identity.
In most cases, these new representations of African identity have been produced by hip
hop artists belonging to what I refer to as the Rising Generation. This generation, which is the
cohort of African people born on the continent or in diaspora between 1968-1991, was most
significantly affected by the transformations known collectively as Africa Rising. These
transformations include several loosely connected phenomena such as declining poverty, rising
GDPs, increased life expectancy, falling fertility rates, strengthening democracies, improved
leadership and expanding infrastructures. Together, these indicators tell a still-unfolding story of
the improving state of Africa’s economic, social and political health, particularly as it relates to
development and the potential for future successes.
As with all generational groups, the dates identified with the Rising Generation (1968-
1991), are not intended to be definitive, yet have been carefully chosen as productive markers
with which to roughly outline the boundaries of this cohort. First, 1968 is used to mark the birth
of this generation, as by that year colonialism had fallen in most African nations.
11
As will be
revealed below, this new era of independence resulted in a significant shift in the worldview of
African citizens, who had previously been engaged in the struggle against colonialism as their
primary objective. Thus, whereas the defining focal point of the previous cohort (what I refer to
as the “Independence Generation”) had been the anti-colonial struggle, the Rising Generation

11
While not all African nations were independent by 1968, those gaining independence after this year were mostly
either smaller countries like Guinea-Bissau (recognized in 1974) and São Tomé and Príncipe (1975), or under the
control of other African (rather than European) nations like Namibia (controlled by South Africa until 1990) and
South Sudan (part of Sudan until 2011). Significant exceptions to this general trend do exist (for example, both
Mozambique and Angola gained their independence from Portugal in 1975); however most large countries (and
along with them, most African citizens) were already independent by 1968.
16
had no first-hand knowledge of this experience because the overwhelming majority of this latter
group were born in independent states.
On the other end of this period, 1991 serves as a productive cutoff for the Rising
Generation. This year was carefully selected as the endpoint because it was this year in which the
formal abolition of Apartheid took place in South Africa. Significantly, this abolition was not
only an important turning point in the lives and history of South Africans, but also, as will be
detailed below, for the citizens of other African nations in the southern region. As such, 1991
marks a crucial turning point in the development of Africa and the lives of its inhabitants, and is
therefore recognized as a key catalyst in the larger narrative of Africa Rising. For this reason, it
also signifies a shift in the social atmosphere on the continent, thereby justifying its use as a
bookend for the Rising Generation.
Using these guideposts, the Rising Generation is roughly charted out as the cohort of
individuals who came of age during an important transitional period on the African continent.
What started out as an era of hopeful enthusiasm ignited by the successful struggles for
independence had by the 1980s deteriorated into a period of economic decline, uncertainty and
instability. In response to these challenges, many African nations adopted new economic, social
and political practices, such that, by the mid 1990s, the situation on the continent began to
improve once again. Since this time, circumstances, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, have
continued to improve, as is evinced through the six indicators Steven Radelet employs to chart
Africa Rising, which include economic growth, health, education, population growth & fertility,
trade & investment, and poverty. In this way, just as the Independence Generation was
inextricably shaped by the anti-colonial struggle, the Rising Generation is defined by the
growing pains and hard-won successes of their newly independent states.
17
However, these successes have not been enjoyed equally by all African people. On the
contrary, the effects of Africa Rising have generally been to expand the African middleclass by
improving their access to resources and power, particularly within the realm of representation.
Consequently, it has been the experiences of this group that have grown disproportionately more
visible in recent years, at the same time as they have also become more mobile, globally
integrated and affluent. The result has been the emergence in global media of an African world
citizen who is young, educated, physically mobile and embraces cultural hybridity, such as that
put forth by artists like Blitz the Ambassador in his albums Native Sun (2011) and Afropolitan
Dreams (2014) as outlined above.
Efforts to make sense of this new cohort of African people first began to surface in the
development sector around the turn of the millennium. In an article published in the early
2000s
12
entitled “The Cheetah Generation: Africa’s New Hope,” author George B. N. Ayittey
points to an emerging group of young African professionals as the driving force behind Africa
Rising. These individuals, he argues, are highly productive and innovative, and, most
importantly, can evaluate their circumstances clearly, which he emphasizes as essential to the
continued progress of the continent. This is because, unlike the older “Hippo Generation,” whom
he describes as “intellectually astigmatized [sic] and stuck in their colonialist pedagogical patch”
who can “only see oppression or exploitation…when it wears a white face,” Cheetahs:
do not relate to the old colonialist paradigm, the slave trade, nor Africa’s post-colonial
nationalist leaders…Nor do they have the least inclination for colonial-era politics. In
fact, they were not even born in that era. As such, they do not make excuses for nor seek
to explain away government failures by blaming some external force. Unencumbered by

12
While no specific date is provided on the document itself, it is likely that the article was published prior to his
book Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Africa’s Future (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), in which
Ayittey discusses the Cheetah Generation in greater detail. At the same time, the article makes several references to
events occurring as recently as 2003, which suggests it was likely written at some point that year or in 2004. George
B. N. Ayittey, “The Cheetah Generation: Africa’s New Hope,” No Date, Accessed May 9, 2017,
https://freeafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/The-Cheetah-Generation.pdf
18
the old shibboleths over colonialism, imperialism, and other external adversities, they can
analyze issues with remarkable clarity and objectivity.
13

This unfettered approach, Ayittey argues, is key to the group’s success. Although here and
elsewhere he labels these Cheetahs as a generation, he is careful to clarify in later works that they
are a philosophical category where membership is flexible rather than temporally fixed. In this
way, Ayittey softens the requirements for belonging to this new and important group, ultimately
presenting the Cheetah Generation as a state of mind.
After the publication of Ayittey’s article, other development scholars also began to
engage with the Cheetah concept. For example, in Africa Rising: How 900 Million African
Consumers Offer More Than You Think (2009), Vijay Mahajan details the characteristics of the
Cheetah Generation as an important youth market. Similarly, Steven Radelet also focuses heavily
on the Cheetah in his 2010 project Emerging Africa: How 17 Countries are Leading the Way;
however, in this text he pays special attention to their role in sub-Saharan Africa’s economic
recovery.
In all cases, following Ayittey’s lead, scholars engaging with the Cheetah concept have
also tended to refrain from denoting clear boundaries to belonging, thereby allowing the category
to remain somewhat fluid and ambiguous. However, one consequence of this practice has been
the failure to acknowledge that these conceptualizations of the Cheetah also tend to present the
group as elite—or at the very least middleclass—due to their positioning as educated young
professionals with access to resources. To illustrate this point, consider the individuals Ayittey
holds up in his article as exemplar Cheetahs. First, Ayittey describes a young university graduate
attending a conference at the Institute of Economic Affairs in Elmina, Ghana. He then points to
the Ghana Cyberspace Group, celebrating their efforts to challenge political corruption and

13
Ibid.
19
support economic growth in the country. In a similar manner, Ayittey also names a group of
African students who organized a series of conferences addressing Africa at George Washington
University in Washington D.C., followed by the executive director of a company called Inter
Regional Economic Network. In all cases, these individuals are depicted as resourceful self-
starters who do not wait for help from the West to address their issues and concerns surrounding
Africa. Yet, Ayittey leaves out any overt recognition of their privilege or how it enables the
resourcefulness he celebrates in his work. Consequently, his presentation of the Cheetah and its
subsequent iterations have been limited because they assume the experiences of these upper- and
middleclass individuals are universal rather than unique.
In 2005, a few years after Ayittey first published these observations on the Cheetah
Generation, Ghanaian-Nigerian author Taiye Selasi presented her own take on the emerging
group. In a short piece written for LIP Magazine entitled “Bye-Bye Babar,” she also describes a
dynamic collective of young Africans who have recently begun surfacing in cities all around the
world:
They (read: we) are Afropolitans – the newest generation of African emigrants, coming
soon or collected already at a law firm/chem lab/jazz lounge near you. You’ll know us by
our funny blend of London fashion, New York jargon, African ethics, and academic
successes. Some of us are ethnic mixes, e.g. Ghanaian and Canadian, Nigerian and Swiss;
others merely cultural mutts: American accent, European affect, African ethos. Most of
us are multilingual: in addition to English and a Romantic or two, we understand some
indigenous tongue and speak a few urban vernaculars. There is at least one place on the
African Continent to which we tie our sense of self: be it a nation-state (Ethiopia), a city
(Ibadan), or an auntie’s kitchen. Then there’s the G8 city or two (or three) that we know
like the backs of our hands, and the various institutions that know us for our famed focus.
We are Afropolitans: not citizens, but Africans of the World.
14

In the remainder of this article, Selasi goes on to outline the origins of the group (offspring of
African migrants who began leaving the continent in the 1960s), and to identify their defining

14
Taiye Selasi, “Bye-Bye Babar,” The LIP, March 3, 2005, Accessed May 9, 2017,
http://thelip.robertsharp.co.uk/?p=76
20
characteristics (namely, cultural hybridity and a “willingness to complicate Africa”
15
). Like
Ayittey’s Cheetahs, Selasi’s Afropolitans are also framed as the most visible manifestation of
recent changes; however, in contrast, Selasi’s discussion is primarily centered on elements of
culture.
Although brief, Selasi’s article proved significant because it launched the Afropolitan
into public discourse. Gradually at first, conversations about the Afropolitan began to surface,
primarily in the art world where a separate essay by Achille Mbembe titled “Afropolitanism” had
also been recently published.
16
By 2010, however, these conversations had begun to trickle into
the mainstream, as is evinced by, for example, the publication of South African magazine
Afropolitan and the unrelated blog started by Minna Salami entitled Ms Afropolitan. In 2011, the
Houston Museum of African American Culture hosted an evening structured around the topic, as
did the London Victoria & Albert Museum in England. Over the next several years, many new
voices joined in the conversation from all over the world, offering their own perspectives on
shifting African experiences in a variety of forms ranging from literature to photographs to
fashion to music.
Typically, the most ardent champions of Afropolitanism have also tended to embody its
basic characteristics: they are generally well-educated, multilingual, professional young Africans
whose sense of home and belonging spans multiple continents. Blitz the Ambassador, for
example, is a clear illustration of this propensity, whose third album Afropolitan Dreams (2014)
engages this experience directly. First and foremost, throughout the album, Blitz establishes a
dual sense of home—rooted in both Ghana and New York—which is most clearly illustrated in

15
Ibid.
16
Given that both articles were published around the same time, it is generally accepted that neither can lay sole
claim to the origination of the Afropolitan term.
21
the song “Call Waiting,” as detailed earlier. Similarly, although his stated profession of rapper is
somewhat unorthodox, he consistently frames it as a typical job, thereby aligning his work with
that of any other white-collar business professional. In addition, his engagement with history,
broad vocabulary, reference to structural inequalities and analysis of current events all serve to
indicate his high attainment of education, as does his demonstrated multilingual dexterity.
There have been, however, alongside these ardent illustrations of support, many other
Africans who are far less accepting of the Afropolitan concept. Emma Dibiri, for example, is
highly critical of Afropolitanism, arguing that “[its] insights on race, modernity and identity
appear to be increasingly sidelined in sacrifice of […] consumerism.”
17
Binyavanga Wainaina
also laments this connection, insisting in an impassioned 2012 speech that “I am a Pan-
Africanist, not an Afropolitan.” In a later interview, Wainaina admits that he is “not as angry at
Afropolitanism as I was before;” however, he maintains his rejection of the concept as a
meaningful or productive tool:
Look, I think what you’ve had, and maybe particularly in the diaspora, in the big cities—
in New York, in London and everywhere else—is this idea that there is this Black
African elite who are able to purchase these products, clothes[, etc.,] and inventing new
things […] [T]hey have a fashion week and they meet in Paris, they meet in London, they
meet in Africa and they can mix all these things in remix. And so it’s this kind of identity
which bears no responsibility. It consumes, sometimes it creates, but it has no residence
in any solid value.
18

Thus, although distinct from the Cheetah in its closer association with consumer culture, the
problem of elitism is equally applicable to both concepts, a fact which is due in large part to the
uneven distribution of benefits among Africans resulting from Africa Rising as suggested earlier.

17
Emma Dibiri, “Afro-Rebel (Or Why I am Not an Afropolitan),” Black Girl Dancing at Lughnasa, July 9, 2013,
Accessed August 1, 2017, http://thediasporadiva.tumblr.com/post/55036008288/afro-rebel-or-why-i-am-not-an-
afropolitan
18
Binyavanga Wainaina quoted in an interview posted on YouTube, shared by TVWiriko, “Entrevista Binyavanga
Wainaina,” March 28, 2014, Accessed August 1, 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF2ZGXUWKlw
22
Despite these limitations, the emergence of both the Afropolitan and the Cheetah over the
last fifteen years still serves to illuminate the growing interest in and confusion surrounding
contemporary African identity, which has largely been brought about by the transformations of
Africa Rising. Put simply: What does it mean to be African? More specifically, what does it
mean to be African in the twenty-first century, when the old constructs of Blackness and
tradition are no longer able to fully encompass the diversity and richness of the African
experience? Where does one find an appropriate place to root such a complex and multifaceted
identity, when communication and transportation technologies have advanced to such a point
where the line between “on the continent” and “in diaspora” has been blurred almost beyond
recognition? How are we to make sense of the Africa and Africans of today in a manner that
honors their rich socio-cultural history, while at the same time also recognizing their dynamic
present-day realities?
In this project, I, too, attempt to take up these questions of identity. Much like Ayittey
and Selasi, I am also particularly interested in this emerging group of young Africans, who seem
to be persistently at the forefront of all positive developments occurring around the continent.
Although I am wholly aware that the experiences and characteristics of this group are not
reflective of the entire Rising Generation, the transformations they undergo in response to recent
developments are still highly instructive of the effects of Africa Rising. As noted earlier, one of
the central outcomes of the Rising phenomena has been the expansion of an African middleclass,
whose visibility, in response, has improved dramatically, due in large part to their expanding
levels of access to resources and power.
Therefore, I focus this study on the evolution of this elite group, which I, too, have
ultimately chosen to refer to as the Afropolitans. Unlike Dibiri and other critics like her, who
23
reject this notion in its entirety, I, instead, subscribe to Wainaina’s view, which draws a
distinction between the glossy yet empty Afropolitanism popularized by Selasi, and the more
substantive, thoughtful iteration presented by Achille Mbembe. This latter view was also put
forth in 2005, in a short piece entitled “Afropolitanism,” which Mbembe published as part of an
essay collection structured around the exhibit Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent as
noted above. Taking stock of African identity at the start to the twenty-first century, he argues,
“important social and cultural reconfigurations are in progress” that have urged a reconsideration
of what it now means to be African.
19
Pointing to the long and complicated patterns of migration
that have occurred to, from and within the continent, and which have increased significantly in
recent years, Mbembe rejects the notions of cultural purity and traditionalism that have often
structured understandings of belonging within the group. Instead, he argues for a conscious
embrace of hybridity, terming the approach “Afropolitanism,” and presenting it as an alternative
way to structure thoughts around African identity. This approach, he argues, centers on an:
Awareness of the interweaving of the here and there, the presence of the elsewhere in the
here and vice versa, the relativisation [sic] of primary roots and memberships and the
way of embracing, with full knowledge of the facts, strangeness, foreignness and
remoteness, the ability to recognise [sic] one’s face in that of a foreigner and make the
most of the traces of remoteness in closeness, to domesticate the unfamiliar, to work with
what seem to be opposites – it is this cultural, historical and aesthetic sensitivity that
underlies the term ‘Afropolitanism’.
20

Notably, this conceptualization of Afropolitanism as a comfort with cultural difference and
convergence is not unlike the implied perspective put forward by Selasi. In both cases, these
figures are presented as globally integrated citizens, conscious of the impossibly complex
connections that suture all humans together. However, unlike Selasi, Mbembe is careful to detail

19
Achille Mbembe, “Afropolitanism,” Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent, Njami Simon and Lucy
Durán (eds), Laurent Chauvet (trans) (Johannesburg: Johannesburg Art Gallery, 2007), 26.
20
Ibid., 28.
24
the ways in which these practices have always been a part of African culture, thereby relaxing its
links with twenty-first century consumerism. Although, as will be revealed below, such
consumer culture has become a more significant part of African life, in this way, Mbembe
successfully frames his Afropolitanism first and foremost as “a way of being in the world,”
21

which he consistently holds up as a broader and more productive approach to resolving the ever-
increasingly complex question of who and what is African.
Hip Hop and the Afropolitan Identity
African hip hop—or hip hop music produced by Africans residing either on the continent
or in diaspora—has not been the only cultural text to exhibit the emergence of an Afropolitan
identity. Indeed, Instagram has also recently become a popular space of visibility among
Afropolitans, such as is illustrated through self-proclaimed “Border Being” Emeka Okereke’s
profile @emakaokereke,
22
as well as #afropolitan hashtags on both Instagram and Twitter.
African literature, too, has recently showcased a plethora of Afropolitan characters, appearing
not only in recent texts like Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go (2013), but also, as some have
argued, originating as far back as Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958). Notably, this
association of Achebe’s work with Afropolitanism is suggestive of its much longer history as a
philosophical concept, which is outlined by Mbembe above. This concept, which is one that
embraces foreign cultural practices and aesthetics and merges them with those identified as
African to create new cultural norms and products, is evinced in myriad other forms, such as in
the emergence of Congolese Rumba during the 1940s, which was heavily influenced by Cuban
musical practices introduced to the Congo Basin via radio broadcasts.

21
Ibid.
22
Please see Emeka Okereke, “@emekaokereke,” Instagram, Accessed August 2, 2017,
https://www.instagram.com/emekaokereke/
25
However, the timing of hip hop’s introduction into Africa, its immense popularity among
African youth, and its relatively low production costs and ease of circulation has made African
hip hop one of the most readily accessible forms of representation. Given the superior levels of
access to this form that have been enjoyed by those in the upper and middle classes, the
Afropolitan experience that began to emerge amongst them in response to Africa Rising has, not
surprisingly, been the most visible representational development to occur within the music.
Therefore, above all other mediums, African hip hop offers the best opportunity to study the
Afropolitan’s development, as its record of this historical process has arguably been the most
detailed and the longest.
Hip hop first made its way out of the United States in the early 1980s, which was,
coincidentally, an extremely challenging period for the African continent that has frequently
been referred to as the “Lost Decade.”
23
In stark contrast to the optimism and exuberance that
characterized the era of independence during the 1950s and 1960s, by the late 1970s many
nations on the continent had begun to experience significant setbacks, which progressively
worsened throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s. During this period, economies failed
and democracies collapsed in one newly independent nation after another. For example, between
1975 and 1993 in Nigeria, nearly all transfers of power between leaders were achieved (or
attempted) via coups d’état. Because of these changing circumstances, internal conflict and
violence became increasingly common in many parts of Africa, such as in Uganda, where civil
war broke out between 1981-1986. At the same time, famine also augmented these struggles,

23
The term “Lost Decade” was frequently used to describe a period of significant stagnation and/or regression in
regional economic growth, such as that tied to the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s. For the term’s use in
relation to Africa, please see John Darnton, “‘Lost Decade’ Drains Africa’s Vitality,” The New York Times, June 19,
1994, Accessed August 26, 2017, http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/19/world/lost-decade-drains-africa-s-
vitality.html?pagewanted=all; Frederick Ahwireng-Obeng, “An African response to the new wave of afro-
pessimism,” South African Journal of International Affairs, vol. 10, no. 2 (Winter/Spring 2003), 139-57; and, David
Rieff, “In Defense of Afro-Pessimism,” World Policy Journal, vol. 15, no. 4 (Winter, 1998/1999), 10-22.
26
most notably in the East African nations of Uganda, Ethiopia and Somalia. Furthermore, as the
1980s neared its close, the AIDS epidemic, which had been wreaking havoc on many
communities in the West, also began to rear its ugly head in Africa. Writing in 2003, Giovanni
Arrighi summarized this period well, underscoring the extent to which these problems had
injured African society:
In 1975, the regional GNP per capita of Sub-Saharan Africa stood at 17.6 per cent of
‘world’ per capita GNP; by 1999 it had dropped to 10.5 per cent. Relative to overall
Third World trends, Sub-Saharan health, mortality and adult-literacy levels have
deteriorated at comparable rates. Life expectancy at birth now stands at 49 years, and 34
per cent of the region’s population are classified as undernourished. African infant-
mortality rates were 107 per 1,000 live births in 1999, compared to 69 for South Asia and
32 for Latin America. Nearly 9 per cent of Sub-Saharan 15 to 49-year-olds are living with
HIV/AIDS—a figure that soars above those of other regions. Tuberculosis cases stand at
121 per 100,000 people; respective figures for South Asia and Latin America are 98 and
45.
24

Although Arrighi acknowledges that this period was a challenging time in many places
throughout the world, through his statement he makes clear these struggles were particularly
acute in Africa.
In response to these challenges, many Africans took to diaspora during this period,
initiating the Afropolitan on her developmental journey. Unsurprisingly, the earliest wave of
emigration was largely comprised of upper-class Africans seeking to protect their financial assets
from the troubles on the continent; however, this group was soon joined by middle-, and later,
working class people, who sought to escape violence, famine, political persecution or who were
simply in search of better opportunities. Over time, these groups developed extensive social
networks, connecting themselves to friends and family members back home, as well as to other
communities residing elsewhere in diaspora. Subsequently, these networks helped to facilitate

24
Giovanni Arrighi, “The African Crisis: World Systeming and Regional Aspects,” New Left Review 15 (May/June
2002), 5-36, Accessed May 20, 2017 http://krieger.jhu.edu/arrighi/wp-
content/uploads/sites/29/2012/08/2002_Arrighi_African_Crisis.pdf
27
further movement abroad, which resulted in the continued expansion of these African diaspora
communities.
In addition to people, these diaspora networks also played an essential role in the
circulation of early hip hop music. Much as was the case in other developing hip hop
communities around the world during this early period, the lack of formal circulatory channels
available to hip hop culture forced fans residing outside of the United States to rely almost
exclusively on its physical transportation via cassette tapes, records, magazines, etc. This
process, which will be detailed in Chapter 2, meant that consumption of hip hop was relatively
low among Africans during this first decade, given that they were, even more so than fans in
Europe or Asia, somewhat removed from this circulatory process. The result was the formation
of a small and elite community of fans, whose familiarity with Western culture often made them
somewhat marginalized in relation to other Africans. This marginalization was due in part to the
early perception that hip hop was an American rather than an African cultural practice; however,
it was furthered by the reality that what little hip hop music was produced on the continent
during this period was also heavily Americanized both in affect and ethos. Although Blitz’s first
album, Stereotype (2009) was not released until several years later, its characteristics detailed
above serve as a clear illustration of this evolutionary process.
Two key events occurring in the early 1990s helped to transform the challenging
circumstances in Africa and initiate the emergence of Africa Rising. First, the culmination of the
Cold War in the early 1990s had a significant effect on many African nations. Previously,
numerous countries on the continent had been aligned with either the Soviet Union or the United
States, both having provided significant financial support to developing nations around the world
as a part of their Cold War strategy. However, after the Soviet Union collapsed this strategy was
28
no longer necessary, which resulted in the abrupt dissipation of financial aid from these sources.
This loss of capital exacerbated the struggle of African nations who were already grappling with
growing debt and fewer resources. The loss of this income ultimately forced many governments
to reform their economic policies, reducing debt, discontinuing government subsidies, and
working toward a balanced budget. These austerity measures frequently resulted in an initial
surge in political unrest such as is outlined earlier; however, they ultimately paved the way for
greater stability across the continent.
The second key event to occur during this period was the fall of the apartheid regime in
South Africa. As noted above, because the country had the most fully developed economy in the
Southern region, this political shift also affected the circumstances in surrounding nations.
Throughout the 1980s the international community had placed increasingly severe sanctions on
South Africa in growing recognition of the struggle against apartheid occurring there. While
these sanctions had the desired negative affect on that country, they also sent ripples throughout
the southern region. Thus, when the international community began to lift these sanctions in the
early 1990s, the subsequent increase in flows of capital and resources into South Africa resulted
in improvements, not only in South Africa but also in many of its neighboring countries. For this
reason, the formal abolition of apartheid legislation in 1991 and the subsequent democratic
election of Nelson Mandela in 1994 are both widely celebrated in this region, and are also
justifiably regarded as key turning points in the narrative of Africa Rising.
In response, starting from the mid-1990s, changes in economic, social and political
policies on the continent began to foster growth and development. One of the key threads in this
development was the expansion of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs),
which were essential to the maturation of the Afropolitan as a globally connected, hybridized
29
citizen. The two most influential of these technologies have been the Internet and the mobile
telephone. Much like the early pattern of diffusion for hip hop music described above,
penetration rates for both new technologies were relatively low during their introductory decade,
which resulted in roughly the same small elite group of Africans benefiting from early access.
Notably, the initial expansion of the Internet occurred rather slowly in comparison to the mobile
telephone due to the lack of necessary infrastructure and the higher costs associated with
establishing it.
25
However, the Internet’s connectivity was central to improving access to
information and linking the continent with the rest of the world, which is most evident in the
exponential growth of penetration rates for both following the launch of smartphone technology.
The effect of this digitization process on African hip hop was a noticeable rise in access
to information and representation among fans, particularly those of the developing Afropolitan
group. Whereas previously, most Africans had been relatively isolated from the rest of world, the
introduction of ICTs aided elite hip hop fans to increased their visibility by leveraging this
improved access to the tools of representation. Consequently, the production of African hip hop
expanded during this period, and at the same time, also became more popular and overtly
African. Much as is true of Blitz’s second album Native Sun (2011), these changes were most
apparent in the growing experimentation with local languages and instruments, which helped
attract African listeners and expand the fan base of the music.
One consequence of this growing representation of an affluent, cosmopolitan African was
that they began to capture the interests and imagination of business owners and investors,
resulting in a growing number of advertisement campaigns and products aimed specifically at the
African consumer. Often, these efforts involved the engagement with African culture and/or

25
Other factors also included higher levels of illiteracy and a lack of reliable electricity.
30
aesthetics, which subsequently led to a growing appetite for African-inspired products within the
global culture industry more generally. While many of the resulting efforts came from overseas,
it is also worth noting that others originated among Africans themselves, who were residing
either on the continent or in diaspora. In most cases, participants of this second group were also
members of the privileged class, thereby perpetuating the overrepresentation of the Afropolitan
identity, which is a pattern made evident in Ayittey’s observations of the Cheetah Generation
detailed earlier.
The growing popularity of and commercial interest in African cultural products also
translated into the world of African hip hop, where the embrace of African aesthetics has
continued to advance in the new millennium. The experimentation with formal mixing in the
previous decade has since matured into a sophisticated demonstration of cultural hybridity. As is
illustrated in Blitz’s third album Afropolitan Dreams (2014) detailed in the opening of this
chapter, this hybridity, which continues to embrace several of the foundational practices of
American hip hop’s original form, is punctuated by a stronger focus on African topics, sounds
and experiences that has resulted in the cultivation of a product that is unmistakably African.
However, despite a growing diversity in representation that has recently begun to surface within
the music, it continues to overwhelmingly articulate an Afropolitan identity.
The Studies
To chart this historical progression of the Afropolitan through African hip hop, in this
study I focus specifically on three elements of its evolutionary process: diasporization,
digitization and commercialization. As was outlined above, this progression describes the
experiential changes that have occurred in African lives as a product of Africa Rising, which in
many cases has been significantly aided by globalization. Broadly speaking, “globalization”
31
refers to the ongoing process of global integration that has occurred especially since the 1980s.
However, much like African identity, since the 1980s this term has become an increasingly
slippery concept. Thus, to clarify its use in this project, I employ Arjun Appadurai’s five
dimensions of global culture flows, which he terms “ethnoscapes” (the circulation of people),
“mediascapes” (the circulation of media production tools and products), “technoscapes” (the
circulation of information and technology), “finanscapes” (the circulation of money) and
“ideoscapes” (the circulation of ideologies). Per Appadurai, these five flows interact in
unpredictable and at times even conflicting or disjointed ways, yet together illuminate the
complex narrative of ongoing global integration. Notably, because Africa Rising emerged in the
1990s shortly after the commencement of these enhanced integration flow patterns, many of
these globalization elements have also enhanced and bolstered the Rising phenomena. However,
Africa Rising nevertheless remains its own distinct historical occurrence, bolstered by, rather
than merely a product of, globalization.
The first element of Africa Rising that I examine in this study is a process I refer to as
“diasporization.” Although it may seem obvious, I employ the term throughout this project to
describe the dispersal of people away from their homelands and into diaspora. In this case, I am
specifically interested in tracing the movement of African bodies and culture (as well as its
effects) out of Africa and into other parts of the world, which began to take shape in response to
the transformations leading up to and during Africa Rising, as noted earlier. Significantly, this
circulation of African people is not a new phenomenon, but rather, has been occurring for several
hundred years. However, as will be detailed in Chapter 2, patterns of African diasporization have
undergone a significant shift in the last forty years in conjunction with Africa Rising, which has
sparked the emergence of a new African identity known as the Afropolitan.
32
The second theme I examine in this study is the process of digitization, which began to
occur in the early 1990s at roughly the same time as the start of Africa Rising. Here, digitization
broadly references the introduction and expansion of ICTs and other digital tools into the lives of
African people, both those living on the continent and in diaspora. Although I consider the role
of a variety of digital technologies in this discussion, I focus heavily on the introduction and
expansion of the Internet and cellular telephones into Africa. My reason for this specific
emphasis is that both have played a particularly significant role in the transformations of Africa
Rising, which has been widely noted by many experts including Steve Radelet, Dayo Olopade,
and Vijay Mahajan.
The final theme I consider in this study is the process of commercialization, which began
to surface in the first decade of the new millennium. So far, this commercialization has been one
of the most visible consequences of the Rising phenomena in the twenty-first century, which
therefore necessitates its close examination in this study. Throughout the project, I conceptualize
this process of commercialization as the visible incorporation of African people and cultures into
the global culture industry, which has continued to increase particularly since the beginning of
2010. More specifically, this incorporation has involved the growing participation of African
people as cultural producers within the industry, as well as the increased visibility of African
cultural products and experiences globally. In both cases, the study of these most recent trends
focuses heavily on the flows of goods and capital, as well as cultural texts and ideas between
Africa and the West.
Together, these three themes roughly chart out the historical evolution of Africa Rising,
and illuminate its role in the emergence of the figure known as the Afropolitan. One of the
primary developments revealed through this narrative is the expansion of the African
33
Middleclass and its improving access to resources and power. The result of this trend has been
the growing representation of Afropolitan experiences and identity, particularly within the
cultural texts of African hip hop, which has grown increasingly popular among African youth
since its introduction in the early 1980s.
To examine this evolution, this study focuses specifically on the development of the
Afropolitan as found on African hip hop websites, tracing the ties between access and
representation in relation to the processes of diasporization, digitization and commercialization.
Although several works have begun to emerge in recent years that focus on various international
hip hop scenes including those in Africa,
26
thus far, these contributions have largely avoided
engagement with websites and/or the communities surrounding them. However, as will be
revealed below, the Internet has played a significant role in the cultivation and solidification of
these communities—particularly true of African hip hop, which was still a relatively nebulous
genre when they first emerged in the late 1990s. Because of the music’s niche status and the
difficulties of circulation, it was often through the launch of an African hip hop website that
communities first began to form, and an understanding of the genre came into focus. Thus, much
like the role of digital technology in the trajectory of Africa Rising detailed above, the website
held a key position in the cultivation and solidification of African hip hop.
Each website detailed in this study has been carefully chosen for its longevity, historical
significance, engagement with African hip hop and physical location. While at first this last

26
For example, please see Alain-Philippe Durand, Black, Blanc, Beur: Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture in the
Francophone World (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2002); Brad Wiess, Street Dreams and Hip Hop
Barbershops: Global Fantasy in Urban Tanzania (Bloomington, Indiana: Indana University Press, 2009); D.
Pardue, Ideologies of Marginality in Brazilian Hip Hop (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2008); Ian Condry, Hip
Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006); Ian Maxwell,
Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes: Hip Hop Down Under Comin’ Upper (Middletown, Conecticut: Weslyan Press, 2003);
Mwenda Ntarangwi, East African Hip Hop: Youth Culture and Globalization (Urbana, Illinois: University of
Illinois, 2009); and, Tony Mitchell, Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop Outside the USA (Middletown, Connecticut:
Wesleyan, 2002).
34
criterion may seem somewhat out of place, the physical location of each website has proven to
be central to its organization, thematic structure, content, advertising, aims and ethos. In
addition, it has also affected the specific articulation of Africanness presented through the
website, as what it means to be African in sub-Saharan Africa is often very different from what it
means in Europe or in the United States. Therefore, each case study carefully situates the
featured website within its unique physical location, which is temporally fixed and is revealed to
perform a central role in its development, reception and function. This location is also essential
to the thematic structure of this project, which loosely follows the historical progression of
Africa Rising and the maturation of the Afropolitan. Although all three themes have, to varying
degrees, been occurring simultaneously and on a global scale, this study illuminates the main
thrust of each experiential shift from a unique geographical and temporal location.
Thus, going forward, Chapter 2 focuses on the Netherlands-based website
Africanhiphop.com to examine the process of diasporization, which began occurring in the late
1970s and early 1980s as a precursor to Africa Rising. Due to its proximity and old colonial ties,
Europe was one of the most popular destinations for African emigrants who were leaving the
continent during the Lost Decade, which marked the birth of the Afropolitan. During this period,
like the Afropolitan, African hip hop music was also young, and it developed slowly throughout
the 1980s and 1990s. Because of its popularity, the flow of African people into Europe played a
key role in the circulation of early hip hop, both that flowing into Africa as well as later flows
back out. At times, however, these circulation patterns were not themselves enough, and were
therefore also aided by non-diaspora members, particularly in the early stages when the levels of
access to resources and power among budding Afropolitans was low.
35
In Chapter 3, AfricasGateway.com is employed to illuminate the process of digitization
and its effects on the nature of African hip hop music and its networks. Beginning in the early
1990s, when Afropolitans were still struggling to gain better access to resources and
representation on the continent, this chapter focuses specifically on the introduction of digital
technology into Africa because it is here where improved digital connections were most
significantly felt. More specifically, this chapter examines the introduction of ICTs and other
digital technologies into South Africa, which has since arguably become the most digitized
nation on the continent. The effect of this digitization has been an increase in access to resources
among Afropolitans—particularly as it relates to self-definition and representation. Although this
increase has also visibly extended beyond the Afropolitan group, this broadening has led to more
visible fractures and heightened tensions among competing groups.
Finally, Chapter 4 studies the process of commercialization on African identity using the
American-based African popular music website OkayAfrica.com. By the initiation of this most
recent process, which commenced shortly before 2010, the Afropolitan had matured into full
adulthood. For many, this maturity afforded the opportunity to increasingly participate in the
process of commercialization, which resulted in the expansion of access among Afropolitans
once again, particularly in relation to power. In this study, I focus specifically on this process
through the appropriation of Africa within the global culture industry, which is traced through
the website’s engagement with not only the music but also the aesthetics and people of the
continent. Although Okayafrica.com is shown to be less overtly focused on hip hop than in either
of the two earlier case studies examined, this shift is revealed to be indicative of the evolution of
the music and industry itself. Once again, the effects of this process have been unevenly spread
36
out amongst the African community, thereby facilitating transformations of identity, yet still
failing to fully represent the diversity and complexity of the group in its entirety.
Ultimately, these three studies suggest an image of Africanness today that is very much
like those laid out by both Ayittey and Selasi: a group of young African professionals whose
lives exist in multiple places around the world and who frequently traverse back and forth
between them. Although this Afropolitan figure does not in any way represent the experiences of
the entire Rising Generation nor all African people, the mounting appearance of their lives
reflects a growing sense of hybridity and global consciousness now circulating within the
African world that have been prompted by African development. Afropolitan Dream (2014) and
other similar proclamations of Afropolitanism are thus, an insistence of those experiencing these
changes that they do indeed exist. Ultimately, the apparent rise of the Afropolitan figure is one
response to the looming question of African identity, asserting that, at least for some, it is no
longer race or place that makes an African, but rather one’s state of mind.

37
Chapter 2
Word to Your Mother(land):
Diasporization and the Development of African Hip Hop

Figure 2.1
27

The first cassette tape to feature a rapper performing in Swahili appeared in local shops
around Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 1991. At the time, hip hop had been percolating in the
country for about a decade, but no commercial song had—until then—featured Swahili rhymes.
Because of this distinction, Saleh J’s single Ice Ice Baby was unique, and the response it
garnered from the local youth population was significant. Its popularity and success helped, not
only to launch the rising star of young rapper Saleh J, who subsequently released a full-length
album of the same name (pictured above in Figure 2.1), but also to usher in a new era of hip hop
in Tanzania. Whereas previously artists in the area performed primarily in English and mimicked
American styles, the emergence of Ice Ice Baby inspired Tanzanian rappers to begin
experimenting with local languages and identities. Thus, even just two years later when Saleh J
left the country to live with a relative in 1993, the production of Swahili rap that his album had
inspired had already become significantly more common across the region.

27
Image of cassette tape jacket of the first commercially released Swahili rap album, Ice Ice Baby by Saleh J in
1991. Obtained via “Swahili version of ‘Now that we found love’ – Heavy D rest in peace,” Africanhiphop.com,
November 9, 2011, Accessed December 2, 2016, http://www.africanhiphop.com/swahili-version-of-now-that-we-
found-love-heavy-d-rest-in-peace/
38
A few years after the initial release of Saleh J’s transformative single, a young hip hop
fan from the Netherlands named Thomas Gesthuizen happened across his album while traveling
through Dar es Salaam on vacation with his father. Intrigued, Gesthuizen bought the tape and
headed back home to Europe. The following year, when a family friend returned from the area
with a few more cassettes for his collection, Gesthuizen—who happened to be in the African
Studies program at Leiden University—started to suspect they were markers of an emerging
local scene and resolved to focus his Master’s thesis on examining it further. In pursuit of this
goal, Gesthuizen returned to Tanzania for a year where he completed his fieldwork, conducting
numerous interviews with local artists and gathering all of the hip hop cassette tapes he could
find. Gesthuizen then compiled and synthesized this information into a successful thesis;
however, he felt it unfair to the artists to keep their music and stories to himself. Consequently,
this Master’s scholar began building a simple one-page website he named “Rumba-Kali”
featuring the music and information he had gathered through his studies, which he launched from
the Netherlands in early February, 1997.
Initially, because of Gesthuizen’s specific research topic, his website had a strong
Tanzanian focus, which was articulated most notably through the name “Rumba-Kali”—a
Swahili slang term meaning “flat broke” that was popular in Tanzania during the 1990s.
28

However, due to the relatively small size of early African hip hop networks, Rumba-Kali
attracted more than just Tanzanian hip hop fans, instead drawing a diverse crowd of both
continental and diasporic Africans. In response, Gesthuizen embraced this growing diversity on

28
Per the explanation provided on the old Rumba-Kali website, “[t]he word ‘Rumba Kali’ is a Swahili expression
which [was] in use especially in the nineties, where it refers to a situation in which you are totally broke. We took it
from the cover of an old school Tanzanian rap cassette by WWA…There’s a second explanation that we gave to it;
as mentioned befor ‘rumba’ is the Latin inspired music from 1940’s to 80’s Central Africa and still played by many
older artists. ‘Kali’ is a Swahili word and means ‘intense’ or ‘sharp’…so hip hop is our ‘intensified rumba’…” As
quoted from “Welcome to Rumba-Kali,” Wayback Machine, Accessed January 8, 2017,
https://web.archive.org/web/20000229040617/http://www.africaserver.nl/rumba-kali/index2.htm
39
his website by championing a broader Pan-African focus and actively promoting a sense of
diasporic unity. As shown in Figure 2.2 below, these efforts were immediately visible when
entering the space, illuminated not only by the subtitle “Home of Pan African Hip Hop,” but also
through the introductory language framing its content, which opened with the words of famous
Nigerian musician and political activist Fela Kuti who insisted that “in [the year] 2000 Africa
must be one.” In 1999, Gesthuizen took this Pan-Africanism one step further by changing the
official name and web address of Rumba-Kali to the broader and more inclusive
Africanhiphop.com (AHH). Significantly, this name change not only represented a definitive
shift in the focus and intentions of the website, but also inherently positioned AHH at the
forefront of the burgeoning movement. Because, at that time, African hip hop was still a nascent
and ambiguous genre, the website significantly contributed to the shaping of its geographical
boundaries, and to this day continues to hold an important role in demarcating what does and
does not constitute African hip hop music.

Figure 2.2
29

The second major development to shape the AHH website was the introduction of the
forums section, which took place in 2001. As was the common path of development for hip hop

29
Screen capture of early Rumba-Kali website as provided on “Rumba-Kali Home of African Hip Hop (original
page as it appeared in 1997),” Africanhiphop.com, Accessed January 8, 2017,
http://www.africanhiphop.com/rumba-kali.htm
40
websites during this period, the AHH forums section quickly became a major focal point for
visitors to the website, ultimately replacing the guestbook, which was an earlier digital space
where users could post brief messages of introduction and interact with one another. Like the
guestbook, the forums also allowed individuals to communicate directly with each other;
however, the improved interface made such communication far more engaging and accessible.
Consequently, the forums greatly helped solidify and expand the AHH community. As one
member recalled:
There was this huge community of people…from all over the place who were—they were
hot. I mean, they had skills—they could spit their pants off, and it was fun! Most of those
people now, we are talking brain surgeons, we are talking the son of the president of
Nigeria […] Kna’an was there before he blew up in the West. Yeah, so we are talking a
lot of people who, back then were just trying to find their feet and trying to express
themselves…We talked everything from politics to science, but in lyrical form, and it
was miles ahead of anything else. There was nothing else like that on the Internet. There
was no other place where you could get that kind of community.
30

This sense of community also manifested in other parts of the website, such as through the
frequent encouragements to contribute missing information (also evident in Figure 2.2 above),
as well as the penchant for cross-promoting other African hip hop websites.
31
Significantly,
although activity in the forums section began to wane during the latter half of the decade, the
reputation these boards garnered as a popular destination for talented African practitioners gave
the website a prestige that further enhanced its standing in the world of African hip hop.
Partly because of this developing reputation, as the 2000s progressed, AHH continued to
mature and grow more firmly entrenched in the world of African hip hop. The most visible sign
of this maturity was the emergence of the African Hip Hop Foundation, which was established

30
R23, interviewed by author in London, England on June 13, 2016.
31
Most notably seen through the links section found in nearly every iteration of the AHH website, such as can be
found on this page from March 28, 2004, archived by the Wayback Machine, Accessed February 3, 2017,
http://web.archive.org/web/20040328011529/http://africanhiphop.com/
41
by Gesthuizen and a few of his colleagues as the non-governmental organization (NGO) behind
the AHH website. This foundation, which replaced the Netherlands-based NGO Madunia,
32

began to appear on AHH as its sole official copyright owner in April 2005. Following this
development, the foundation also began to organize and promote several African hip hop-related
events, including a documentary film festival that took place in Amsterdam from 2004 to 2008,
and a music festival called “Doin’ it in the Park” from 2009 to 2011.
In 2009, the Foundation was also first linked with the African Hip Hop Archive, which
started appearing on AHH under listed projects. On its overview page the archive was described
as a collection of “music, articles, books, newspaper cuttings, music videos, interviews and other
materials related to the development of urban African youth culture since the early 90’s.”
33

Significantly, this collection was not a new element of AHH, but rather a repackaging of the
archival practices that had always been a part of the website. Thus, the appearance and labeling
of the archive as another official project of the African Hip Hop Foundation reveals it as a
continuation and expansion of the website and further underscores the position of both AHH and
its creators in the landscape of African hip hop, which by that time had been firmly established
as an important resource and voice of authority.
In addition to the formation of the African Hip Hop Foundation, the relaunch of African
Hip Hop Radio, which also occurred in 2005, similarly indicates the expansion of AHH and its
authority as an influential platform during this period. The radio project originally began as a
webcast in 1998, and its intended function was to give exposure (and access) to the African hip

32
This NGO was centered around the promotion of African music. For more information please see “Madunia,”
Wayback Machine, Accessed February 3, 2017,
http://web.archive.org/web/20010405022834/http://www.madunia.nl/
33
“African Hip Hop Archive,” African Hip Hop Foundation (1997-2009), Accessed January 14, 2017,
https://web.archive.org/web/20090803045508/http://www.africanhiphop.com/projects/african-hip-hop-archive/
42
hop artists whose music was featured on the website. Although initially conceptualized as an
hour-long playlist that included brief liner notes and was available for limited streaming by AHH
visitors, the scope and intent of this project expanded over time to include program hosts with
recorded commentary between tracks and non-stop streaming. In both cases, these improvements
made access to the webcasts easier, but the reach of the program was still largely limited to the
user audience of the website. However, this limitation was removed with the radio relaunch in
January 2009 because it was then—for the first time—also licensed to conventional radio
stations
34
. In addition, this program relaunch also coincided with the emergence of
AfricanHipHopRadio.com, which included a separate newsfeed that exclusively featured
information related to the program. In both cases, like the formation of the African Hip Hop
Foundation, the developments that took place in conjunction with this radio project further
revealed the expanding influence and improved social status that the AHH website enjoyed. At
the same time, this development also indicated a growing global interest in African hip hop
music that can, in part, be attributed to the successful pursuit of AHH’s original goal of
increasing the visibility of artists and their music.
However, by the end of the decade, AHH had begun to struggle against the sharp decline
in user participation that many hip hop websites experienced during that period. As is detailed in
Chapter 2, this decline can in part be explained by the rise of social media platforms like
Myspace, Facebook and Twitter that emerged in the latter half of the decade and enticed both
users and artists away from the forums. In response, AHH underwent multiple redesigns and
worked to expand its engagement with social media by creating a Twitter account and Facebook
page. The most recent redesign, which was launched in January 2015, also included an overhaul

34
The specific radio station hosting the show changed over time; however, the first was a national broadcaster in the
Netherlands called Vpro Radio.
43
of the forums section that now appears primarily as a tool for artists to promote themselves and
their music. Thus far, these efforts have succeeded in maintaining AHH as a destination for
African hip hoppers from all over the world, despite the significant changes to the landscapes of
both online hip hop and African hip hop that have taken place over the last twenty years. Thus,
as is noted on AHH’s “About” page, while today it has been joined by “many more African hip
hop websites[,]…Africanhiphop.com remains the starting point and final destination for anyone
wanting to know more about hip hop in the Motherland.”
35

In addition to providing one of the most thorough evolutionary accounts of both African
hip hop music and its online culture over the last two decades, AHH is also significant because
of its role as a diasporic space where members of the African Diaspora can share experiences and
build community, facilitating what Brent Hayes Edwards describes as the practice of diaspora.
However, Gesthuizen’s role in AHH complicates this practice, as it brings to light the ways in
which individuals outside the diaspora have contributed to and participated in this process.
Rather than dismissing Gesthuizen’s engagement with the website and community as a simple
case of cultural appropriation, instead, I argue that he functioned as a surrogate to the African
Diaspora in the Netherlands, helping to facilitate and enable diasporic practice in the region
during a period when such practice was less accessible to African Diasporans themselves. At the
same time, Gesthuizen’s academic background and position as a non-diasporan have also
informed the specific articulations of Africa and African identity that are expressed through the
website. Thus, AHH provides a more robust and complex picture of the nature of diasporic
practice, and ultimately reveals how the diasporization of the African experience has drawn out
new shades of gray in the construction of contemporary African identity.

35
“About,” Africanhiphop.com, Accessed December 8, 2016, http://www.africanhiphop.com/about/
44
A New African Diaspora
To begin, it is first necessary to clarify a few important terms related to the African
Diaspora. Because of the long and extremely complex history of African dispersal from the
continent, current engagements with this diaspora have often focused on only a subset of
experiences within it, thus leading to confusing and at times seemingly contradictory
conceptualizations of the group.
36
To avoid this confusion, I employ an approach to the African
Diaspora that is heavily informed by Emmanuel Akyeampong’s phases of dispersal, which
nuances the formation of this group by separating it into three distinct periods of movement: pre-
nineteenth century (motivated by slavery), nineteenth century (motivated by imperialism), and
twentieth century dispersal (motivated by labor, education and trade). This categorization is
useful because it acknowledges the existence of multiple types of movement within the same
group and draws out the significant effects such differences cultivate. Thus, it serves here as a
useful starting point for a more productive and complete picture of the African Diaspora.
When speaking of the African Diaspora’s twentieth century phase of dispersal,
Akyeampong argues that this group is unique because it is marked by “the ties Africans outside
Africa retain with their home countries.”
37
Evidence of this distinction is easily observable, such
as, for example, in the formation of nation-based African immigrant communities in places like
New York and Los Angeles that took shape during this century. Although initially small, in the
last forty years these communities have begun to grow rapidly, and currently show no signs of

36
For instance, in Paul Gilroy’s analysis of the Black Atlantic, he paints an image of the diaspora born from the
Transatlantic Slave Trade, thereby excluding those who left the continent under different circumstances or who were
internally displaced either as refugees or through rural to urban migration. Conversely, in their study of home
associations, Claire Mercer, Ben Page and Martin Evans describe an African Diaspora composed of members with a
clear sense of belonging and direct knowledge of their homeland and ethnic identity, which excludes nearly all those
individuals who have lived for generations abroad, such as (although not exclusively limited to) those outlined in
Gilroy’s group.
37
Emmanuel Akyeampong, “Africans in the Diaspora: The Diaspora and Africa,” African Affairs 99 (2000), 188.
45
slowing down. Thus, building on Akyeampong’s analysis, which was published in 2000 at the
dawn of the new millennium, I extend this distinction to cover both the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries, thereby separating the African Diaspora into two general categories: the “Old African
Diaspora” and the “New African Diaspora.”
Although not the focus of this study, the Old African Diaspora is nevertheless an
important conceptual category, as it can be loosely equated with Paul Gilroy’s “Black Atlantic,”
comprised of individuals whose African ancestors were forcibly dispersed through slavery across
the Americas and Western Europe between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, the
Old African Diaspora also includes other historical experiences of and reasons for diasporic
movement, as well as recognizing the dispersal of Africans to other parts of the world. For
example, Paul Manning details the circulation of slaves around the Indian Ocean prior to the
Transatlantic Slave Trade, while Akyeampong explains how African migration became more
heavily informed by the pushes and pulls of imperialism during the nineteenth century.
38
Under
the concept of the Old African Diaspora all these groups are included. What makes their
experiences similar then, is not the harrowing journey across the Atlantic Ocean or even the
humiliations of slavery, but rather it is the irreconcilable fact that through these forms of
movement ancestral homelands almost inevitably remained far away, both physically and
metaphorically speaking. Thus, all members of the Old African Diaspora ultimately share a
common point of disconnection (Africa), which is further augmented with each generation
descendants remain abroad.

38
For other discussions that also gesture toward an expanded view of the African Diaspora, please see Tiffany Ruby
Patterson & Robin D. G. Kelley, “Unfinished Migrations: Reflections on the African Diaspora and Making of the
Modern World,” African Studies Review, vol. 43, no. 1 (April 2000), 11-45.
46
Members of the New African Diaspora, in contrast, tend to view their migration as
temporary and thus, as noted above, are united by the stronger and more cogent ties they retain
with both their home nations and the African continent. Recently, this experience of the African
Diaspora has become an increasingly popular topic of study, such as in Clair Mercer, Ben Page
and Martin Evan’s analysis of diaspora contributions to African development through home
associations, and in Donald Martin Carter’s examination of the experiences of Senegalese
immigrant communities in Italy. In these articulations, the African Diaspora often appears first
and foremost as an immigrant community, thereby aligning their experiences more closely with
other non-African migrants than with Old African Diaspora populations, the latter of whose time
abroad and national identities accentuate vast differences between the two groups despite their
ancestral connections.
Extending Akyeampong’s analysis of twentieth century dispersal, which characterizes
African movement in this period by the pursuit of new opportunities following paths informed by
colonialism, the New African Diaspora embraces this general trajectory, yet delineates an
important shift that took place during the final quarter of the twentieth century. Beginning
around the end of the 1970s, in response to the emerging challenges of the Lost Decade, the rate
of African dispersal rose significantly and the socioeconomic status of those who were going
abroad also began to change. Whereas earlier twentieth century dispersal (what I term the
“restricted” phase) had been largely characterized by elites leaving the continent to study at
Western universities or pursue new business endeavors, contracting economies, political
instability and widespread famine during the late 1970s and early 1980s broadened the spectrum
and augmented the pace of those Africans going abroad. Speaking of the Ghanaian Diaspora,
Akyeampong notes:
47
Ghanaian emigration from the late 1970s…encompassed the professional and non-
professional classes, elites and commoners, male and female, on a scale that was
stupendous. When Nigeria expelled illegal aliens in early 1983, official estimates put the
number of Ghanaian ‘returnees’ at between 900,000 and 1.2 million. These included
university and secondary school teachers, artisans, domestic servants, unskilled labourers,
and prostitutes. The figure represented a tenth of Ghana’s total population at the time.
39

Notably, this number also represented only those returning to Ghana from one nearby country,
and therefore suggests the probability of a much larger number still residing in diaspora
elsewhere. Additionally, rather than diminish such trends, the gradual shift toward growth that
many African economies began to exhibit during the early 1990s has continued to enable an
ever-increasing number of Africans to go abroad. This trend is due not only to the improved
economic circumstances in several countries that has expanded the middleclass and made the
formerly elite privilege of migration for school or work more accessible, but also to the
unevenness of such growth and the frequent setbacks in many areas that have continued to push
large numbers of Africans abroad.
The effect of this expansion was to increase the embrace of an Afropolitan worldview. As
the number of Africans entering diaspora increased, so too did their familiarity and
comfortability with difference. Often, these moves necessitated the acquisition of a second or
third language, for example, and the ability to learn and adapt to new cultures. In response, a
growing penchant for cultural mixing and hybridity began to surface, which gradually flowered
into a full embrace of Afropolitanism.
The notable shift in experiences of Africans entering diaspora during this forth dispersal
period—what I term the “rising” phase—has also been aided by the emerging trends of
globalization, which is marked by the increased fluidity of national boundaries and global
interconnectivity. One of the key characteristics of this development has been the role new

39
Akyeampong, “Africans in the Diaspora,” 206.
48
communications and transportation technologies have played in facilitating these global culture
flows, the former of which is examined more specifically in Chapter 3. Due to the higher levels
of both real and virtual access to the homeland these technologies afford, Africans have once
again changed the way they move and experience diaspora. The result has been the rising phase
of diaspora, which has grown even more interconnected with the African homeland, blurring the
boundaries between the continent and its diaspora almost beyond recognition. Indeed, evidence
of this shift can be found in the increasingly common inclusion of diaspora populations in these
imagined national and continental communities, such as, for example, the African Union’s
recognition of the African Diaspora as the sixth region of the continent in 2003.
40

Therefore, this label “New African Diaspora” (as well as its “Old African Diaspora”
counterpart) represents an attempt to expand and clarify Akyeampong’s categorization of the
African Diaspora. As in his original analysis, this approach continues to delineate experiences in
the diaspora by drawing distinctions between different phases of diasporic movement and
acknowledging the varied effects such differences have on contemporary understandings of the
group. However, whereas Akyeampong perceived twentieth century migration as a single
coherent wave of dispersal, it has now become evident that the transformations he describes
during the 1970s and 1980s were in fact markers of a shift in dispersal patterns that have once
again resulted in the emergence of a new and distinct phase of experiences within the group.
41

By acknowledging this break, the New African Diaspora continues to underscore the
commonalities among diasporans going abroad since the turn of the twentieth century, while at

40
The formation of home associations, which are informal diaspora groups comprised of members from a specific
town, region or ethnic community on the continent, is another clear example of this trend.
41
Significantly, Akyeampong does note the arbitrary nature of these century markers in his work, which suggests
that perhaps he too might choose to modify his categories based on current trends in African migration patterns.
However, as he argues, such distinctions serve as useful (and necessary) guidelines to delineate general shifts and
trends, despite their imperfections.
49
the same time also pointing out important differences between experiences that have grown
apparent over the last forty years. In doing so, this conceptualization aims to provide an updated
and more useful framework with which to approach the African Diaspora in its entirety, while at
the same time also leaving the door open for further refinements and modifications in the future.
Diaspora, its Practice & the Rise of African Hip Hop
These distinctions in diasporic dispersal are fundamental to understanding the emergence
of hip hop in Africa as well as the complexities surrounding the practice of diaspora occurring
through AHH. As Eric Charry describes in his introduction to Hip Hop Africa (2012), in contrast
with the United States, hip hop initially grew popular on the continent among a small, “elite
Westernized segment of African youth,”
42
whose embrace of the foreign culture is highly
indicative of the budding Afropolitan. This characterization is also in line with restricted phase
diasporans because, as detailed earlier, it was this group who left the continent in small numbers
to pursue education or better earnings through trade or employment, which in all cases, were
opportunities only available to those Africans who possessed connections and/or money. And
because many of those individuals continued to stay abroad or at the very least traveled back and
forth between the West and the continent frequently, in the 1980s when hip hop began to emerge,
their children—or in some cases their children’s children—were in the unique position of
straddling both African and Western worlds, and thus also of holding a more thorough
knowledge of Western culture than their continental counterparts. Of course, not all African
youth who embraced early hip hop resided in diaspora; however, the westernization they
exhibited regardless of their location typically resulted in their marginalization on the continent,

42
Eric Charry, “A Capsule History of African Rap,” in Hip Hop Africa: New African Music in a Globalizing World,
ed. Eric Charry (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2012), 3.
50
which created a sense of cultural dislocation that was much like that experienced by Africans
who did go abroad.
43

In addition to their special association with Western culture, restricted phase diasporans
also played a key role in the early circulation of hip hop into Africa. First, during hip hop’s initial
decade on the continent, circulation occurred mainly through the costly means of physical
transportation, as most radio and television stations, where present in Africa, typically did not
play hip hop music. As Charry explains, “[hip hop] had to be physically imported in the form of
audio and video cassettes and vinyl records. Because there was no significant market yet, it was
literally brought over in bits and pieces by Africans traveling abroad.”
44
Due to the expense of
this process, restricted phase diasporan youth were once again uniquely positioned to access and
circulate early hip hop music, as it was mainly these individuals who possessed the means to
international travel or connections to someone else who did.
45

Because of their unique positions and higher levels of access, restricted phase diasporans
were also often among the first African youths to produce their own hip hop music. Again, this
ordering was due in large part to their elite socioeconomic status, which meant they were more
likely to possess the funds to pay for things like professional studio time or other resources

43
Notably, for those individuals who were living outside of the continent, this cultural dislocation was two-fold, as
they too, were often marginalized for their Western characteristics when in Africa, and again for their African
cultural practices and identities when abroad.
44
Charry, “A Capsule History,” 4.
45
Although Charry emphasizes the important role that African travelers played in the early circulation and
distribution of hip hop to the continent, individuals residing in diaspora were also, undeniably, an essential element
in this complex process. Oftentimes, an African traveler’s introduction to hip hop was facilitated by a diasporic
contact living abroad, who had more knowledge of and access to the cassette tapes and vinyl records than the
temporary visitor, who would then bring them back with him or her (but usually him) to Africa. Additionally, once
knowledge of hip hop music began to permeate the continent, diasporic contacts currently residing in Western
countries became indispensable resources for hip hop fans on the continent who were less able to travel. For these
individuals, the postal service was often the primary means through which to gain access to new materials, which
again relied on the participation of contacts in the West to attain and ship such items back to them. Thus, while
certainly not all transactions of this nature occurred between diasporic members, such relationships were a
significant component of these early hip hop networks, once again underscoring the role of restricted phase
diasporans as key facilitators of hip hop’s entry into Africa.
51
necessary for music production. In addition, these individuals were also more likely to have
connections with resources abroad, which aided in the expanding circulation of African hip hop
music and often became an important step in the professionalization and success of individual
artists and groups. Much as was the case with the early circulation of hip hop from the West into
Africa, early circulation of hip hop out of Africa to the West was also heavily reliant on the
physical transportation of cassette tapes. In this way, once again restricted phase diasporans
played an important role in the birth and growth of the genre. However, as African hip hop music
became more accessible to both consume and produce for African youth in the 1990s and 2000s,
these limitations relaxed, allowing rising phase diasporans to play an increasingly significant role
in the production and circulation of the growing music culture.
As noted above, many young Africans who embraced early hip hop shared a common
sense of cultural marginalization because of their Afropolitan worldview and cultural hybridity,
whether they lived somewhere on the continent or elsewhere in the world. Because of their
shared experiences of marginalization, both groups found themselves in a perpetual state of
limbo that, as anthropologist Donald Martin Carter describes, “encompass[ed] the possibility of
never arriving, of drifting endlessly betwixt and between the new world’s boundaries.”
46
Often,
these young Africans came to serve as a kind of human border unto themselves, pressed together
somewhere between “the West” and “Africa,” yet not fully belonging in either place. In
response, many retreated to a home of the mind, engaging in what Carter refers to as “diasporic
nostalgia,” or “a desire for an imagined world that has not yet come into being.”
47
More
specifically, this nostalgia centered on an imagined world in which they could move freely both

46
Donald Martin Carter, Navigating the African Diaspora: The Anthropology of Invisibility (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 72.
47
Ibid., 18.
52
physically and metaphorically, where boundaries between what is African and what is not is
fluid and highly negotiable.
Hip hop, in many ways, became this world for young New African Diasporans. The
frustrated voices of disenfranchised Black and Brown youth in America reverberated across the
Atlantic Ocean and became a tool through which these budding Afropolitans created a place of
their own to belong. Initially, these hip hoppers were drawn to the marginalized voices they
heard in the music, which reflected many of their own experiences of nonbelonging and framed
them with a Black identity that was easily relatable to their own African diasporic contexts. In
response, the early hip hop these individuals produced was often highly Americanized, featuring
English rhymes over top-forty instrumentals, and frequently mimicking American accents and at
times even lyrics.
48
During the 1990s, however, this mimicry began to give way to
experimentation with local languages and instruments, which expanded hip hop’s fan base on the
continent. The use of local languages was particularly significant to this expansion, as it made
the music more readily accessible to individuals who did not speak English. These experiments
resulted in the emergence of several new hybrid genres, such as, for example, hiplife in Ghana,
kwaito in South Africa and bongo flava in Tanzania (the last of which is foreshadowed by Saleh
J’s single Ice Ice Baby discussed earlier).
During this same transitional period, African hip hop practitioners also began expressing
thoughts and concerns in the music that more accurately reflected their own unique identities as
Africans, thereby transforming African hip hop into a medium of communication that allowed

48
The Arusha-based 1990s group Niggaz With Power (N.W.P.) is a productive illustration of these early
characteristics, as their name is an unmistakable reference to the American rap group Niggaz Wit Attitudes
(N.W.A.), and their first cassette tape included instrumentals from popular American East Coast rapper KRS-One.
J4, “Tanzanian Hip Hop: The Old School (1991-1999),” Africanhiphop.com, Accessed February 13, 2017,
http://archive.africanhiphop.com/index.php?module=subjects&func=viewpage&pageid=100
53
disparate participants throughout the African world to develop a shared sense of community. Of
course, as is the nature of diaspora, this imagined community was not monolithic, but rather, a
highly eclectic and fluid conglomeration of people with different cultural, national, religious,
historical, linguistic, socioeconomic and geopolitical backgrounds. As such, although the
umbrellas of African and Black identities provided points of commonality for members of the
diaspora to congregate under, such umbrellas did not fully mask the important points of
disconnections and difference that are always present in diaspora.
49
Thus, members of the
African hip hop community had to continually strive toward, or “practice,” a unified group
identity and sense of belonging that could bridge these often significant gaps and allow group
members to unite across them.
To this end, the launch of Gesthuizen’s website in the late 1990s was a well-timed and
significant development for the African hip hop community. As noted above, despite its early
Tanzanian centered content, Rumba-Kali and later AHH attracted a diverse following of African
youth from all around the world. Initially, most visitors who accessed the website did so from
Western countries like the United States and England, which further supports the link between
restricted phase diasporans and early hip hop music. However, as time progressed more
continent-based users also began to participate in the online community, thus revealing expanded
interests in and access to hip hop music in continental Africa.
Throughout its life, AHH has consistently served as an important platform for diasporic
practice, in large part because it facilitates the solidification of the larger diaspora community.
The most apparent of methods through which this process has been achieved has been the

49
As Stuart Hall rightly argues, such masking is not only impossible, but also, ultimately undesirable, as such
distinctions between diaspora identities represent “a profound difference of culture and history. And the different
matters.” Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan
Rutherford, (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), 227.
54

Figure 2.3
50

representation of African nations and diaspora locations on the website via hip hop music. As is
illustrated in Figure 2.3, AHH has posted numerous articles over the years tied to the
music or culture of a specific country, ranging from those with more established hip hop scenes
like Nigeria and Senegal, to lesser-known producers like Swaziland and Togo. In all cases, these

50
Data obtained through the old Africanhiphop.com website “Africanhiphop.com – The Foundation of African
Hiphop Culture Online,” African Hip Hop Foundation. Accessed April 25, 2017, http://archive.africanhiphop.com/
4
2
2
1
1
55
1
35
2
25
1
35
1
1
1
2
1
1
10
2
2
19
2
8
2
1
3
1
3
1
8
1
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
ZIMBABWE
ZAMBIA
UGANDA
TUNISIA
TOGO
TANZANIA
SWAZILAND
SOUTH AFRICA
SOMOLIA
SENEGAL
RWANDA
NIGERIA
MOZAMBIQUE
MOROCCO
MALI
MALAWI
MADAGASCAR
LIBERIA
KENYA
IVORY COAST
GUINEA
GHANA
GAMBIA
CONGO
COMOROS
CHAD
CAPE VERDE
CAMEROON
BOTSWANA
BENIN
ANGOLA
ALGERIA
Articles in AHH Country Library 1997-2008
55
inclusions served two parallel purposes, first to create a sense of belonging among visitors from
the named regions, and second to encourage visitors from other regions to embrace this
belonging by presenting each as part of the same diasporic world. Although the amount of
coverage given to various national scenes has been highly uneven, Gesthuizen and later the AHH
team made it clear that these discrepancies were a product of the website’s unequal access to
information and materials rather than different levels of belonging. To underscore this view,
visitors were encouraged to contribute whatever information they felt was missing from the
website, thereby further enhancing the sense of shared ownership and belonging within the
online African hip hop community.
The ability to listen to music through AHH has been particularly significant to its
successful facilitation of diasporic practice among community members. As Tia DeNora argues,
music functions as an artifact of memory, explaining, “[l]ike an article of clothing or an aroma,
music is part of the material and aesthetic environment in which it was once playing…[R]eheard
and recalled [later, it] provides a device for unfolding, for replaying, the temporal structure of
that moment.”
51
For members of the AHH community, a familiar song is thus a means of
transporting oneself to an earlier time and place, while at the same time also connecting with
other diasporans who share a similar nostalgic relationship to the song. In the case of new music,
this collective listening serves as a major step in building new points of commonality through
which diaspora community members can unite across their physical separation. Thus, in all
cases, listening to music through AHH is an essential act in the process of cultivating a collective
group identity, as familiarity with the music becomes highly symbolic of membership to the
group.

51
Tia DeNora, Music in Everyday Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 67.
56

Figure 2.4
52

In addition to the music, AHH also solidified the African diaspora community through
the visible participation of diasporic members in the production of the website. As was stated on
the “About” page in a 2011 version of AHH, these participants hailed from “various origins in
Africa and the diaspora,”
53
and thus, through the process of this website production, inherently
participated in the cultivation of a transnational diasporic community. The team of DJs featured
on AfricanHipHopRadio.com in 2008 is a particularly visible illustration of this point. As
pictured above in Figure 2.4, the seventeen participants collectively outlined the parameters of
the African diasporic world as imagined through AHH, with nearly all individuals claiming
origins in at least one African nation, and several also drawing connections with secondary
countries in Europe, the Americas, or elsewhere on the African continent. Significantly, only
three DJs do not identify a specific African nation as their point of origin, and only J4 (a.k.a. DJ

52
Screenshot taken from “AfricanHipHopRadio.com – monthly African hip hop radio shows,” African Hip Hop
Foundation (1997-2005), Wayback Machine, Accessed April 26, 2017, https://web-
beta.archive.org/web/20080828232533/africanhiphopradio.com
53
“About,” Africanhiphop.com, Accessed December 2, 2016, http://www.africanhiphop.com/about/
57
Jumanne, a.k.a. Thomas Gesthuizen) appears to have no ancestral roots in Africa. Thus,
AfricanHipHopRadio.com and the AHH website in general conveys a strong image of diaspora
practice, as these participants come together from various parts of the African Diasporic world to
form this African hip hop community.
As with most diaspora communities, this focus on a common ancestral homeland is a
central element of the African hip hop world, which in this case is represented by the African
continent. This homeland, however, embodies more than just a geographical space, and as David
Morley has noted, is most accurately described by the German notion of heimat, which he
explains as both home and homeland, where community is imagined and belonging is
experienced.
54
In the case of African hip hop, Africa is positioned as this heimat, and through
AHH it functions as the link connecting those in diaspora to their point of origin as well as each
other. For those still residing on the continent, this heimat is often situated in the future, built
upon the aspirations of overcoming current hardships and righting wrongs.
55
In contrast, those in
diaspora tend to articulate an Africa of the past or present, often framing it as an idyllic (or at the
very least a preferable) alternative to life abroad.
56
In this way, both groups engage the music as
a vehicle through which to create an imaginary African world to which they can all belong,
thereby cultivating a sense of community amongst all those dispersed either physically or
metaphorically from a homeland that has, as Carter argues, not yet fully materialized.
Hence, the strong focus on Africa found on AHH is not surprising. In addition to
statements identifying “hip hop in the Motherland” as the core interest responsible for unifying

54
David Morley, Home Territories: Media, Mobility & Identity (New York: Routledge, 2000), 32.
55
For example, please see video for “Coup 2 Gueule” (Let’s Act on our Words) by Senegalese duo Gelongal, as
discussed on “Conscious Senegalese rap is not dead,” Africanhiphop.com, September 9, 2010, Accessed August 26,
2017, http://www.africanhiphop.com/conscious-senegalese-rap-is-not-dead
56
For example, please consider “Motherland” by M.anifest on Immigrant Chronicles: Coming to America (2011)
58
all visitors to the website, visual content like music videos and still images also reference the
African continent frequently. For example, in this picture from a news article posted in
November 2013 about a new release from Burkina Faso MC Smarty, the artist is shown with his
band in the middle of an unpaved street in an African village, with other villagers in the shot
presumably going about their daily lives (Figure 2.5). Through this image Smarty is firmly
situated within this African homeland and thus also as a member of the global African
community. At the same time, the AHH visitor is also reminded of his or her own continental
“home,” thereby encouraging a sense of connection with the artist and reaffirming personal
belonging to the online African hip hop community.

Figure 2.5
57

In addition to these visual references, the African continent also served as the focal point
and primary lens through which all content on AHH was filtered. As one community member put
it, “[t]hey always focused only on one thing, and that was either the diaspora or the artists on the
continent. And that was it, end of story.”
58
Examples of this practice can be found throughout the

57
Image obtained from Juma4, “Smarty – Afrikan Kouleur video,” Africanhiphop.com, November 9, 2013,
Accessed April 26, 2017, http://www.africanhiphop.com/smarty-afrikan-kouleur-video/
58
Milk, interview by author, Johannesburg, South Africa, April 7, 2014.
59
website, such as in a 2011 article addressing the recent passing of American rapper Heavy D. To
commemorate him, this article included audio of Heavy D’s popular song “Now That We Found
Love;” however, rather than the original version the article featured the Swahili arrangement
recorded by Saleh J for his album Ice Ice Baby described in the opening of this chapter.
59
In a
similar fashion, when Kanye West and Jay-Z’s collaboration album Watch the Throne (2011)
was released, AHH discussed the album in an article titled “Watch the Throne Turn Purple,” in
which the primary focus was on the album’s sampling of South African musician Caiphus
Semenya, and whether or not the artist would be appropriately compensated.
60

Finally, although perhaps it goes without saying, continental Africa is also engaged
frequently through the hip hop music found on AHH. Returning to DeNora’s argument regarding
the ties between music and memory, here again, streaming both new and old songs is central to
visitors’ ability to access a sense of connection with the community via the music. For new
music especially, which has grown increasingly inclusive of indigenous sounds and local
languages, visitors are provided with a rich tapestry of aural markers that call upon the African
continent and thus, articulate a notion of home.
61
To this end, even the African accented voices
of presenters whose commentary began appearing in the radio webcasts aided in this process,
which continued to grow increasingly present as more presenters were included as regular parts
of the show, and more content shared through the website.
In this way, over the last twenty years AHH has consistently served as a central platform
through which the New African Diaspora’s Rising Generation has been encouraged to engage in

59
Please see Juma4, “Swahili version of ‘Now that we found love’ – Heavy D rest in peace,” Africanhiphop.com,
November 9, 2011, Accessed April 26, 2017, http://www.africanhiphop.com/swahili-version-of-now-that-we-found-
love-heavy-d-rest-in-peace/
60
Please see Juma4, “Watch the Throne Turn Purple,” Africanhiphop.com, August 16, 2011, Accessed April 26,
2017, http://www.africanhiphop.com/watch-the-throne-turn-purple/
61
For example, as is evident in Blitz the Ambassador’s album Afropolitan Dreams (2014) detailed in Chapter 1
60
the practice of diaspora. Most notably, this practice has been undertaken through the clear
demarcation of diaspora group parameters, as well as the cultivation of a collective identity
through news and a common identification with the heimat. In these ways, members have
successfully bridged across the gaps that lie between their experiences, to connect and develop a
sense of a shared African hip hop community with one another. Although AHH has not been the
only place through which such relationships have occurred, it is nevertheless an important space
where such diasporic practice transpires.
Surrogating in the Netherlands

Figure 2.6
62

The Netherlands is, perhaps a first, a surprising location for the launch of the AHH website.
Presently, its population is moderately diverse, with nearly 78% of the Netherlands’s 17 million
residents of Dutch origin, and 22% from various other parts of the world (please see Figure 2.6).
Significantly, other Europeans account for nearly half of these “non-Dutch” residents, thereby

62
CBS Statistics Netherlands, “Population; sex, age, origin and generation, 1 January,” August 1, 2017, Accessed
August 26, 2017,
http://statline.cbs.nl/Statweb/publication/?DM=SLEN&PA=37325ENG&D1=0&D2=0&D3=0&D4=0&D5=1,5-
9&D6=13-20&LA=EN&HDR=G2,G3,G4,T&STB=G1,G5&VW=T
Netherlands
77.90%
Europe (not
Netherlands)
9.44%
Africa
3.78%
Americas
3.89%
Asia
4.87%
Oceania
0.13%
NETHERLANDS POPULATION ORIGINS 2016
61
leaving the non-White
63
population of the Netherlands at just under 13%. For the African
Diaspora, their current numbers sit at roughly 7% of the Netherlands’s total population,
composed of approximately 22% New African Diasporans, along with 30% Surinamese (349,
022), 13% Dutch Antilles (150,981), 2% Cape Verdean (22,1257) and 33% Moroccan (385,761)
immigrants (please see Figure 2.7). However, as is detailed below, until recently the African
Diaspora population in the Netherlands remained quite small, and the group’s specific patterns of
migration into the country have been dominated by members of the Old African Diaspora. Thus,
during the early stages of African hip hop’s development, the Netherlands lacked a significant
number of restricted phase diasporans, which is the group shown above to have been so central
to the early circulation and production of the music. To overcome this lack, outsiders like
Thomas Gesthuizen played a crucial role in its early development, as they served as surrogates to
the formation of African hip hop communities and helped to facilitate diasporic practice.

Figure 2.7
64

63
While nationality is distinct from race and does not always equate directly with it, the numbers still provide a
rough indication of general trends within the Netherlands.
64
CBS Statistics Netherlands, “Population.”
African Diaspora Population 2016
New African Diasporan Moroccan Dutch Antillean Surinamese Cape Verdean
62
Although in his introduction to Hip Hop Africa, Charry details the important role Western
European countries played in the early circulation of hip hop music, his focus on France—and
Paris in particular—is due to the strong relationship between Francophone African countries and
their European metropole that emerged during the colonial era and continued to persist long after
independence.
65
However, unlike France and England, and to a lesser extent also Portugal, Italy,
Spain and Belgium, the Netherlands did not maintain a significant colonial presence on the
African continent following its loss of the Cape territories to the British in the early 1800s.
Instead, the Dutch colonial empire was concentrated in the East and West Indies—what is today
Indonesia and the Caribbean nations of Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, St. Estatius, St. Martin
and Surinam. Due to this distinction, African migrants did not have the same direct lines of
access to the Netherlands that French and English colonial histories proffered, which resulted in
significantly smaller numbers of restricted phase migrants arriving there directly from the
continent. Instead, post-WWII immigration flows into the Netherlands were largely populated by
returning Dutch nationals and Moluccans until the early 1960s, and the Surinamese and Dutch
Antilleans, as well as Turkish, Moroccan and Cape Verdean guestworkers, from the 1960s
through the early 1970s.
As stated above, because of its unique colonial history, restricted phase diasporans were
relatively absent in the Netherlands during African hip hop’s formative years. Much like other
European countries, the Netherlands experienced an influx of elite African Diasporans from its
colonial holdings in the mid-twentieth century; however, because these colonies were located far

65
For example, Paris became a particularly central hub for hip hop related activity in the early years, as s evidenced
by the debut of H.I.P.H.O.P. in 1984, which was the first regular program dedicated to hip hop to be aired on
national television anywhere. In response to this hub, and as further evidence of its connection, Dakar, Senegal,
which, like most former colonial capitals, continued to maintain strong ties with its colonial parent, developed one
of the first hip hop scenes on the African continent.
63
away from the African continent, the arriving migrants who belonged to the African Diaspora
were members of the Old rather than the New, which meant they had far weaker ties to the
continent than those arriving migrants in other Western European nations. In contrast, the
guestworkers that immigrated to the Netherlands from Morocco and Cape Verde in the 1960s
and 1970s did possess these stronger continental ties; however, they were typically unskilled
workers with low levels of education, thus aligning them more closely with rising phase
diasporans who began to go abroad in greater numbers in the second half of the 1970s.
66
Thus, in
both cases, African Diaspora groups in the Netherlands lacked the unique social and economic
characteristics necessary for early hip hop consumption, thereby necessitating the participation of
an outsider from the Netherlands to perform the restricted phase diasporan role, and spark the
formation of a Netherlands-based African hip hop community.
Much like the westernized African youths who first embraced American hip hop on the
continent in the early 1980s, Thomas Gesthuizen was also uniquely positioned to serve as this
conduit of African hip hop in the Netherlands during the early 1990s. Although Gesthuizen did
not experience the cultural marginalization early African practitioners did for their affinity
toward Western culture,
67
his familiarity with African cultures though his studies at Leiden
University had a similar effect to that of these young Africans’ westernization, in that it too
positioned him as a prime entry point for African hip hop music in the West. Although
Gesthuizen may not have been considered “elite” by Dutch standards, he possessed many of the
most important attributes necessary to fulfill the role of a restricted phase diasporan. In addition
to being the appropriate age and residing in the Netherlands, he also spoke Swahili as well as

66
Significantly, the flows of these two migratory groups into the Netherlands lasted until the “immigration stop”
took place in Northwestern Europe during the mid 1970s.
67
As described by Charry, these individuals had “little relationship with the traditional performance genres of their
home countries and were often more culturally allied with the United States.” Charry, “A Capsule History,” 4.
64
Dutch and English, which allowed him greater access to the music he came across in Tanzania
than most other Dutch residents enjoyed. Furthermore, Gesthuizen also had personal contacts on
the continent and managed to travel back and forth between Africa and the Netherlands multiple
times, thereby enabling him to transport hip hop cassette recordings out of the continent, which,
as noted earlier, was an essential part of the early circulation of African hip hop abroad. In this
way, Gesthuizen served as a cultural bridge between the Netherlands and Africa, facilitating the
circulation of African hip hop music beyond the continent and enabling the growth of a small
African hip hop community in the Netherlands.
Gesthuizen also facilitated the practice of diaspora through his launch of AHH in the late
1990s. Although he relied heavily on free resources to build and maintain this hip hop website,
as is detailed in Chapter 3, such a process is still a relatively privileged act, as it requires access
to both the tools of production (i.e. computer, Internet connection, etc.), as well as the knowledge
of how to use them. Thus, in the Netherlands, where restricted phase diasporans (who would
normally be well positioned to fill such a role) were relatively scarce, Gesthuizen once again
stood in as surrogate to this diasporic practice. Much as his physical movement between Europe
and Africa aided the transportation of cassette tapes in the early 1990s, his virtual platform
further assisted the circulation of African hip hop music throughout the diasporic world in the
late 1990s and going forward, thereby further expanding the formation of diaspora networks and
facilitating increased African hip hop-centered community building around the world.
In addition to running AHH, Gesthuizen also performed the surrogate’s role through his
efforts to promote specific African hip hop artists. The most prominent illustration of these
efforts can be found in the Tanzanian hip hop group X Plastaz (Figure 2.8), whom he met while
65
conducting his fieldwork in Arusha, and subsequently became the group’s de facto manager.
68

Because of his efforts, X Plastaz became one of the first internationally recognized African hip
hop groups, performing in the Netherlands first in 2001, and then again as the headliners for
World AIDS Day in 2002. In addition, the group was also featured in several compilation
albums, including two separate projects in the Rough Guides series as well as a piece put
together by National Geographic. The positive attention generated from these projects also led to
the production of the group’s first full-length album Maasai Hip Hop, released on the German
record label Out Here in 2004. Although sadly, in 2006 one of the group’s original members
Faza Nelly died unexpectedly, the remaining members continued to make music together. In
2009 Gsan was invited to participate in the annual BET Cypher in New York, where he
freestyled alongside other well-known MCs such as Wale and KRS-One. Also in 2009, the five
remaining members released a new single “Furaha,” which was followed by another single
“Afrika” in 2010. Today, per the group’s Facebook page they continue to make music together,
despite now being spread out across several different continents.

Figure 2.8
69

68
Initially, when Gesthuizen met the members of X Plastaz, the group had three members: Nelly, Ziggy, and Gsan.
However, they met Yamat shortly thereafter, when traveling out to a remote Maasai village south of Arusha. The
youngest two members of the group, who were siblings to one of the group’s members were added later in the X
Plastaz career. Katrina Daly Thompson, “Bongo flava, hip-hop and ‘local maasai flavors’: interview with x plastaz,”
in Native Tongues: An African Hip Hop Reader, ed. P. Khalil Saucier (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2011), 288.
69
Image from “X PLASTAZ | Out | here records,” Out Here Records, Accessed December 3, 2016,
http://outhere.de/outhere/x-plastaz/
66
A careful examination of this narrative reveals the extent to which the success of X
Plastaz was tied to Gesthuizen’s engagement with the group. First and foremost, X Plastaz was
one of the most frequently mentioned hip hop groups on AHH, which strongly reflects
Gesthuizen’s connection and his efforts to increase the group’s visibility.
70
Similarly, X Plastaz
also received exposure through other online media outlets Gesthuizen had cultivated
relationships with, such as, for example, AfricasGateway.com.
71
Additionally, the Netherlands
locations for some of X Plastaz earliest international performances can also be understood as the
result of his efforts and connections in that country, which subsequently led to opportunities of
participation in other major projects, including Rough Guides and National Geographic as noted
above. Ultimately, these events were responsible for X Plastaz’s positive recognition in Europe
and elsewhere in the world, which further opened the door to new opportunities, including their
2004 record deal in Germany and Gsan’s BET Cypher participation in 2009.
1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998
Angola 289 75 207 258 159 119 541 * * * * *
Ethiopia 543 682 885 1017 816 298 447 * * * * *
Ghana 2515 920 812 715 465 140 73 * * * * *
Liberia 25 19 17 164 335 342 702 411 343 635 471 193
Nigeria 167 131 417 901 740 233 245 * * * * *
Somalia 213 395 2382 1690 1710 4246 4330 5393 3977 1461 1280 2775
Sudan - - - - - 94 160 258 604 658 678 1875
DRC 1356 448 680 196 297 477 1305 2180 771 435 592 411
* Annual refugee and asylum seeker data not available

Figure 2.9
72

70
For example, when Gsan participated in the BET Cypher in 2009, the event was noted in two separate posts to the
website, the first in Juma4, “Tanzanian emcee in BET Hip Hop Awards cypher,” Africanhiphop.com, October 26,
2009, Accessed April 28, 2017, http://www.africanhiphop.com/tanzanian-emcee-in-bet-hip-hop-awards-cypher/; and
the second in Juma4, “Gsan (X Plastaz) in BET hip hop awards cypher 2009,” Africanhiphop.com, October 29,
2009, Accessed April 28, 2017, http://www.africanhiphop.com/gsan-x-plastaz-in-bet-hip-hop-awards-cypher-2009/
71
For example, please see “X Platsaz – Maasai Hip Hop – New Release 16 Aug 2004,” AfricasGateway.com July
20, 2004, Accessed April 28, 2017, http://www.africasgateway.com/2004/07/20/x-plastaz-maasai-hip-hop-new-
release-16-aug-2004/
72
Data from Philip J. Muss, Migration, Minorities and Policy in the Netherlands: Recent Trends and Developments,
Department of Human Geography, University of Amsterdam Centre for Migration Research (1992), 13; Philip J.
Muss, Migration, Minorities and Policy in the Netherlands: Recent Trends and Developments, Department of
Human Geography, University of Amsterdam Centre for Migration Research (1993), 10; Philip J. Muss, Migration,
67
Despite the lack of restricted phase diasporans residing in the Netherlands during African
hip hop’s formative years, by the early 2000s the New African Diaspora had established a
significant presence in the country. Although undoubtedly, a few of these new residents were
restricted phase diasporans, the clear majority belonged to the rising phase, many of who had
begun immigrating to the Netherlands as refugees and asylum seekers in significant numbers
during the late 1980s. As is evident in Figure 2.9 above, which shows the asylum requests from
the six most significant flows of seekers origination from sub-Saharan Africa during this period,
each of these groups followed their own individual migratory patterns, which in all cases, were
mainly in response to the challenges of the Lost Decade.
73
Thus, much like the Moroccan and
Cape Verdean guestworkers who came to the Netherlands in the 1960s and 1970s, most of these
new immigrants arrived with relatively little, and often lacked the means to facilitate a smooth
transition to Dutch society.
However, because of African hip hop’s growing availability in the Netherlands and
increasingly strong aesthetic ties to Africa, New African Diaspora youth residing in the country
during this period often expressed a growing interest in the Netherlands-based community. Over
time, due to its rising popularity, these youths, as well as members of the Old African Diaspora,
began to participate in the community in increasingly active roles.
74
These trends, combined with
the greater connectivity of the Internet and the maturation and professionalization of the Rising
Generation’s restricted phase diasporans (detailed in Chapters 3 and 4 respectively), resulted in

Minorities and Policy in the Netherlands: Recent Trends and Developments, Department of Human Geography,
University of Amsterdam Centre for Migration Research (1999), 4.
73
As one example, Somalian asylum requests began to spike in 1989, which was the year following violence that
erupted across several northern Somalian cities and a signed peace agreement with Ethiopia that pushed many
Somalis out of their homes.
74
Evidence of this trend can also be seen on AHH, as the visibility of African Diasporans rose significantly over the
2000s and 2010s. For example, please see the listed DJs for African Hip Hop Radio in 2008 shown in Figure 2.4
above.
68
the declining need for diaspora surrogates like Gesthuizen to lead community formation. Thus,
while he continues to participate in AHH and the diaspora community it created, neither
Gesthuizen nor his website occupy the same central role in the world of African hip hop as they
once did in the 1990s.
75

Identity in Diaspora
The construction of African identity animated through AHH is heavily influenced by this
history of diaspora. As detailed above, much like African hip hop music itself, AHH was quickly
embraced by members of both the physical and metaphorical branches of the group as an
important space to (re)imagine their collective homeland and build a sense of community. In
response, the African identity presented through AHH was heavily diasporic. This identity was
conveyed not only through the emphasis on diaspora experiences in much of the content posted
to the website, but also, as noted above, through the nostalgic and sometimes utopic engagement
with the African continent as the ultimate place of belonging for all members of the group. In
this way, AHH clearly reflects the music’s historical path of development, as well as the
website’s own diasporic location.
First, AHH places a strong emphasis on diaspora experiences, which is also indicative of
its connection with the expansion of Afropolitanism. Throughout its lifespan, much of AHH’s
content has featured stories about events and artists living abroad. As one example, in a 2011
article titled “Rema Major’s Ongoing Journey – Sudan to Miami,” the author conveys a strong
sense of perpetual diaspora movement in the life experiences of young rising female rapper
Reema Major:

75
For example, a young Nigerian man going by the name AK who once participated as a community member of the
AHH website is now playing a central role in its administration. In addition, whereas AHH was one of the only
websites focused on African hip hop at the time of its launch in 1997, today it is joined by many other websites
focusing on African hip hop music and culture.
69
Reema was born in 1995 in Khartoum […] from a Sudanese mother and a father from
Dubai. When she was young her family fled the war to Kenya and later Uganda, before
moving to Canada in 1998 – most of her young life was spent moving from one place to
the next. At the age of five, Reema was first exposed to rapping by her older cousin in
Canada.

Ten years down the line – she had moved to Kansas, USA by then – her talent was
exposed through radio appearances and a mixtape ‘Youngest in charge’. She moved back
to Canada, started working with Canadian management and performed at the Honey Jam,
then at the 2010 BET Cypher. That same year she signed a record deal with
G7/Universal/Interscope, resulting in a new mixtape and the current single ‘I’m the one’
with its video partly shot in Miami in the presence of Rick Ross.
76

By charting these diaspora movements in detail, the author not only clearly presents Reema as a
diaspora subject, but also encourages the cultivation of AHH group identity through such
diasporic movement, as it is a common experience shared by many participants in the AHH
community. As further evidence of this trend, other diaspora-centered articles also include
“Gabriel Teodros about his new album Children of the Dragon,”
77
“Tripple 2: From Accra with
Love,”
78
and “Congo Grove,”
79
which in all cases either implicitly or explicitly articulate
diasporic movement.
Also in the written content of the website, Africa is frequently situated as an ideal
homeland, although in many instances shown as an ideal not yet fully realized. The opening
remarks displayed on the early Rumba-Kali website described in the beginning of this chapter
are a prime illustration of this practice (“Africa must be one”), as they focus heavily on the
African continent in its entirety as the common point of origin, but at the same time also
expresses a longing for its yet unrealized unity. Thus, in true diasporic fashion, this unity is taken

76
Juma4, “Reema Major’s Ongoing Journey – Sudan to Miami,” Africanhiphop.com, November 1, 2011, Accessed
December 3, 2011, http://www.africanhiphop.com/musicvideos/reema-major-ongoing-journey-sudan-to-miami/
77
Ado, “Gabriel Teodros about his new album Children of the Dragon,” Africanhiphop.com, July 6, 2014, Accessed
April 30, 2017, http://www.africanhiphop.com/gabriel-teodros-about-his-new-album-children-of-the-dragon/
78
AK, “Tripple 2: From Accra with Love,” Africanhiphop.com, July 7, 2013, Accessed April 30, 2017,
http://www.africanhiphop.com/tripple-2-from-accra-with-love/
79
Juma4, “Congo Grove,” Africanhiphop.com, May 26, 2010, Accessed April 30, 2017,
http://www.africanhiphop.com/congo-groove/
70
up as one of the primary goals on AHH, which is carried out through the visible construction of a
diaspora community on the website. Not only is the national and cultural diversity of its board
members, radio team, writers and editing staff underscored several times throughout the
description of the site,
80
but, as noted above, it is also made clear that their unity is achieved
through a shared interest in “hip hop in the Motherland.”
81
By noting this unity and framing it as
the ideal to which all Africans should strive, AHH itself also engages in diaspora nostalgia,
thereby affirming its presentation of a clear diasporic identity.

Figure 2.10
82

In addition to its written content, AHH also articulates a diasporic identity through the
music it shares. One of the most overt examples of this practice is Ghanaian MC M.anifest’s
music video for “Coming to America.” In this video, M.anifest articulates common experiences
in diaspora—the sensation of being endlessly in motion—not only through the lyrics he rhymes
in the chorus (“I’m going, going/I’m coming, coming/What tomorrow holds, nobody knows”),

80
This is evident, not only on the “About” section on the webpage, but also in the “Bio” section on the
Africanhihop.com Myspace page. Africanhiphop.com, “About,” Africanhiphop.com, Accessed December 3, 2011,
http://www.africanhiphop.com/about/; “Africanhiphop.com,” Myspace, Accessed December 3, 2011,
http://www.myspace.com/africanhiphop
81
Africanhiphop.com, “About.”
82
Screenshot from M.anifest, “Coming to America,” Wally Agboola (dir), (2011); accessed through Ado,
“M.anifest: Coming to America,” Africanhiphop.com, Accessed April 30, 2017,
http://www.africanhiphop.com/africanhiphopnews/m-anifest/
71
but also through the representation of common diasporic troupes, such as images of flying
airplanes, moving trains, and he himself as he navigates through a foreign Western city (please
see Figure 2.10 above).
83
Similarly, in a song by Ritchy Pitch, singer Yasmeen is heard
describing the dilemma faced by many Africans today who enter into diaspora, noting both the
desire to stay “in the Motherland,” and the conflicting reality of “suffering mothers” that
ultimately persuades many to go abroad.
84
Inherent in this dilemma, and also presented in other
songs and videos, is again this implicit longing for the African homeland, thus, further
underscoring AHH’s articulation of diaspora.
Lastly, the physical location of AHH in Amsterdam, Netherlands is also frequently made
apparent in its content, thereby rooting the website itself in a perpetual state of diaspora.
Although most activity on AHH is heavily focused on African hip hop music, several projects
and events that involve physical community gatherings and which are referenced through the
website have taken place in Amsterdam. The two most prominent of these events have been the
annual documentary film and African music festivals organized in association with the African
Hip Hop Foundation, which both took place in Amsterdam between the 2000s and 2010s as
discussed earlier. Similarly, many of AHH’s published articles have also focused on community
events that took place or were scheduled to take place in the region, such as the South African
play (or “hip hopera”) “Afrikaaps,” and the annual African film festival “Africa in the Picture.”
85

Furthermore, the inclusion of a Dutch edition of African Hip Hop Radio also firmly located the
program and the website in its physical space abroad, thereby, in all cases, reminding visitors yet

83
Ibid.
84
Dey Suffer, Richy Pitch feat. Yasmeen; as embedded in Juma4, “Ye Fre Mi Richy Pitch,” Africanhiphop.com,
Accessed December 9, 2011, http://www.africanhiphop.com/africanhiphopnews/ye-fre-mi-richy-pitch/
85
Please see Juma4, “Afrikaaps: Hip Hopera and Documentary,” Africanhiphop.com, Accessed December 3, 2016,
http://www.africanhiphop.com/africanhiphopnews/afrikaaps-hip-hopera-an-documentary/; and Juma4, “Jazz
Mama,” Africanhiphop.com, Accessed December 3, 2016, http://www.africanhiphop.com/africanhiphopnews/jazz-
mama/, respectively.
72
again of the geographic center of this diasporic community, and further underscoring AHH’s
own diaspora identity.

Figure 2.11
86

Notably, Gesthuizen’s background and the trajectory of his relationship to this diaspora
community also affected the unique construction of the identity articulated through the website.
First, it is important to recall that Gesthuizen began this project as an alternative outlet for the
findings of his academic research. Although his initial intent was only to make the data he had
already gathered on Tanzanian hip hop more widely available, as it drew visitors from all over
the diaspora world, this approach shifted into the employment of Rumba-Kali (and later AHH) as
a tool with which to build and display a comprehensive list of African hip hop musicians.
Although Gesthuizen openly acknowledged the challenges of compiling such a list (as well as

86
Screen capture of early Rumba-Kali webpage, accessed through “Rumba-Kali Home of African Hip Hop (original
page as it appeared in 1997),” Africanhiphop.com, Accessed January 14, 2017,
http://www.africanhiphop.com/rumba-kali.htm
73
the inevitability of its ongoing incompleteness), he continued to encourage all visitors to
contribute. This practice is alluded to in a brief explanation posted to a section of the early
Rumba-Kali website labeled “The crews” (shown above in Figure 2.11), in which Gesthuizen
explained, “Crews are listed with the names of their members, a discography and additional
information. Since almost daily somewhere in Africa an MC and a DJ meet up and form a new
group, this list is updated weekly. […] If you have any names or facts to add just let us know!”
As time went on, the archive of African hip hop on the website continued to grow and evolve,
and by 2008 had blossomed into the “African Hip Hop Library” referenced earlier, before it
transformed again into the official African Hip Hop Archive in 2009. By that point, AHH
claimed to have “[perhaps] the largest collection in the world”
87
of cassettes and other African
hip hop-related materials, which it made available through outlets like AHH’s Red Light Radio,
as well as in news and featured articles posted to the website.
88

Through this process, the world of both African hip hop and the African Diaspora came
into focus on AHH. Even in the beginning, as is evinced in the “African Rappers Abroad”
section shown above in Figure 2.11, Gesthuizen’s archival efforts resulted in the mapping of the
diasporic world through his website, which also contributed to the presentation of an African
Diaspora identity on AHH. Although in many ways this process took place organically in
response to the information that became available to him, his conceptualization should also be
understood in relation to his vantage point in the Netherlands. The significant flows of African
immigrants that began arriving there from the continent during the late 1980s and early 1990s
encouraged an understanding of African identity that allowed for movement away from the

87
“African Hip Hop Archive ,” Africanhiphop.com, Wayback Machine, October 10, 2011, Accessed August 26,
2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20111010193035/http://www.africanhiphop.com/projects/african-hip-hop-archive/
88
For example, the audio file of Saleh J’s recording of “Now that We Found Love” featured in “Swahili version of
‘Now that we found love’ – Heavy D rest in peace” discussed earlier (please see note 26 for citation information).
74
continent but maintained emphasis on a strong and direct connection to Africa reflective of the
New African Diaspora. Thus, although the promotion of a broad Pan-Africanism was heavily
visible in the early iterations of the website, it ultimately gave way to the more focused emphasis
on experiences and music of the New African Diaspora, which now forms the basis of the
African identity promoted through the website.
Conclusions on Diasporization
Ultimately, this diasporic African identity found within the virtual pages of AHH can and
should be understood as a product of globalization. As V. Y. Mudimbe explains, for Africa this
process has been largely centered on the “integration of the continent into a global international
structure,”
89
which can be charted along several different paths, including those carved out by the
flows of both people and culture. The emergence of African hip hop as well as AHH is a clear
illustration of these flows—what I refer to as diasporization—as they both depended upon on the
circulatory patterns of these two entities. As shown above, the movement of people away from
the African continent toward the West during the twentieth century helped to establish the New
African Diaspora, whose members continued to maintain strong ties with the continent both
physically and emotionally. These connections helped facilitate the embrace and circulation of
hip hop music from the West, which was gradually adapted and transformed into several new
hybrid African music genres. While at first these hybrid products were met with frequent
critiques of inauthenticity on both sides of the spectrum, over time they won a growing
acceptance and are now broadly recognized as valid expressions of African culture.
Significantly, this evolutionary process also reveals the effects diasporization has had on
understandings of contemporary African identity. First and foremost, this identity has become

89
V. Y. Mudimbe, “Globalization and African Identity,” CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 3, no. 2 (Summer
2003), 206.
75
more abstract, as the increased interconnectedness of New African Diaspora members with the
continent afforded through globalization has greatly reduced the emphasis placed on physical
residence as a criterion of belonging. Whereas prior to the rising phase of the African Diaspora
most individuals who considered themselves to be African resided somewhere on the continent,
due to recent diasporization this correlation can no longer be assumed. Instead, African identity
has become far more complicated and difficult to discern, as it is now ultimately more a question
of personal emotional connection rather than one of address. Unsurprisingly, this shift has been
met by some individuals with anxiety and skepticism, such as is voiced by Bonachristus
Umeogu, who decries it as a loss of identity in his 2012 article “The Aftermath of Globalization
on African Identity.” In a similar fashion, early discussions of Africa hip hop also garnered
cautionary responses, like from one AHH visitor who described it as the product of Africans
“follow[ing] the wrong examples, the negative examples[,] in places like America[,] and
replac[ing] our culture with theirs.”
90
However, contrary to these concerns, as has been
exemplified through the trajectory of African hip hop’s development, this abstraction has not
weakened or diluted African identity, but rather has merely transformed it.
In close association with this abstraction, African identity has also grown more diverse in
response to diasporization. The most visible illustration of this trend has been the increased
presence of mixed-race people within the African community, such as, for example, the young
Sudanese-Emirati woman Reema Major, who was discussed previously in this chapter through
an AHH article as an up-and-coming African MC. Notably, Major was also labeled as a
hyphenated Canadian in this same article, which reveals a second layer of diversity now common
to African identities. Thus, while expansion of the diaspora community through ethnic and

90
Freelivin, “Re: Different Between African Rappers in U.S. N Home,” Africanhiphop.com, Accessed December 8,
2011, http://www.africanhiphop.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=16847
76
national hybridization can in no way be tied to this most recent iteration of diasporization
exclusively, the extent to which today hybridized individuals continue to identify and be
identified as African is a pattern that is a unique to this current moment.
Finally, diasporization has also resulted in the increased visibility of African identity.
Quite simply, as more Africans have gone abroad, they have grown more visible in communities
beyond the continent. Again, this is particularly true of members of the New African Diaspora,
whose relationship with Africa often remains stronger and more concrete than their Old African
Diasporan counterparts. For the former group, the visibility of their African identity is thus not
simply achieved through skin pigmentation, but also through other cultural markers like music,
food, clothing, language, religion, etc. African hip hop, once again, is a clear illustration of this
trend, as it too has grown increasingly visible in the West, not only through the physical
circulation of it into the West via New African Diasporans, but also through its virtual circulation
via media outlets like radio, television and the Internet, the last of which will be examined in
greater detail next in Chapter 3.

77
Chapter 3
Live from South Africa: The Role of Digitization in Community Formation

The dawn of digitization began to take shape in the early 1990s, when the final events of
the Lost Decade were unfolding around the continent. Although, as outlined in the introduction,
the two most significant of these events were the end of the Cold War and the fall of Apartheid,
the introduction of digital technologies also played a key role in the subsequent turnaround
known as Africa Rising. Notably, these technologies did not have a major presence in Africa
during its initial improvement period; however, beginning with the dawn of the new millennium
they exerted an increasingly heavy influence on the continued progress of Africa’s success and
development. For this reason, this chapter focuses specifically on digitization as it occurred
within Africa, where both these developments and their effects on African life and identity can
be most clearly illuminated and understood.
South Africa is perhaps at first, a somewhat peculiar selection for this examination of
digitization on the continent because it is distinct from the rest of sub-Saharan Africa in many
ways. However, above all others, South Africa is particularly well suited for this examination for
several reasons. First, South Africa was one of the earliest African countries to begin the process
of digitization, and since this time, has arguably advanced in this process the furthest. Second,
other Africa Rising characteristics such as a growing economy, a burgeoning middleclass and the
ongoing advancement of national infrastructures have continued to remain prominent features
within the country, and all of which are important factors in the successful entrenchment of
digital technologies. In large part, these developments are due to South Africa’s unique social,
political and economic histories, which have all been heavily influenced by the legacy of
Apartheid. While this legacy has indeed been one of the most prominent in setting South Africa
apart from other Sub-Saharan nations, it has often done so in such a manner that augments rather
78
than undermines questions of identity now surfacing elsewhere on the continent. Therefore, this
chapter mobilizes the unique history of South Africa to reveal the effects of digitization on
contemporary identity in Africa more generally.

Figure 3.1
91

One of the key elements in this digital transformation has been the adaption and
development of information and communications technologies (ICTs). The incorporation of both
the Internet and the mobile telephone especially, have altered the way many Africans experience
their everyday lives, affecting everything from managing finances to maintaining relationships to
participating in national politics. Although both technologies were first introduced to the country
in the early 1990s, South African ICT policy, the slow development of digital infrastructure and
the inaccessibility of technological hardware all contributed to extremely high service prices,
which severely restricted the ability of South Africans to fully engage the potential of these tools.
However, many of these obstacles began to dissipate in the new millennium, resulting in a
dramatic growth in the consumption of both mobile and Internet services seen in recent years

91
The World Bank, “Internet users (per 100) people),” World Bank Group (2015)
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.P2/countries accessed 11/9/2015; and, The World Bank, “Mobile
cellular subscriptions (per 100 people),” World Bank Group (2015)
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.CEL.SETS.P2/countries accessed 11/9/2015
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
South Africa Penetration Rates per 100 People
Internet Users
Mobile Subscriptions
79
(see Figure 3.1). While the expansion and effects of the Internet are the primary concerns of this
chapter, as will be shown below, one cannot be fully understood without recognition of the other.
Over the course of this period, digitization has improved African access in two major
areas: resources and representation. First, much as was the case with diasporization in Chapter 2,
digitization made resources more available to African people. However, whereas gains in access
made through diasporization were attained primarily through physical movement, digitization
expanded these processes into the virtual realm. Not only did this expansion increase the speed at
which community members could gain access to new music, trends, etc., but also it broadened
the potential reach of their circulation. ICTs particularly, expanded individual access to
information, which proved instrumental in the development and expansion of a national hip hop
community in South Africa.
Arguably one of the most important resources digitization has expanded access to among
Africans is the tools of representation. Prior to digitization, image production had been a
relatively exclusive privilege reserved for a small handful of elite individuals, remaining largely
inaccessible to most other Africans due to the high cost of production tools and training
necessary to utilize them effectively. However, the expansion of digital technologies across
Africa made self-representation less expensive and more available, which allowed voices and
perspectives that had previously been sublimated to gain visibility. Thus, whereas before
“African” had been presented in relatively narrow terms (i.e. black skin, traditional customs,
anti-Western/colonial values, etc.), over time digitization allowed this definition to expand. In
doing so, the very presence of these voices and perspectives helped to redefine “African” in
increasingly complex ways, ultimately generating a more diverse, more abstract and increasingly
visible articulation of the identity.
80
The process of digitization also served to increase the visibility of Afropolitans, who had
grown substantially as a segment of the Rising Generation population due to the advances made
by diasporization described in Chapter 2. Although, as noted above, the process of digitization
did expand access to representation among all African people to varying degrees, elites at the
top—which included young Afropolitans—still enjoyed the earliest and most significant gains in
this area. Therefore, as digitization expanded, the Afropolitan identity grew particularly more
visible, in comparison to (although not in complete obfuscation of) the growth in visibility of
other African sub-groups.
Notably, this expanding inclusivity had mixed results on the development of South
Africa’s hip hop community. On one hand, increased access to information and music was
essential to the solidification and expansion of the national scene. However, at the same time the
greater diversity within the scene that began to take shape in response to growing access to
representation, often led to friction and ruptures within the community. In this way, what began
in the 1980s as disorganized and disconnected pockets of hip hop activity in South Africa,
evolved first in 1990s into a small, tight-knit and relatively monolithic hip hop community of
Afropolitans. However, as the community continued to grow and evolve into the twenty-first
century, conflicting views and divergent experiences led to widening fractures, which ultimately
resulted in a national scene that is both diverse and noticeably more disconnected.
As one of South Africa’s earliest hip hop websites, AfricasGateway.com (AG) was an
important part of this transformation. From its launch in 1997 until its fall in 2013, AG embodied
both the successes and the challenges of digitization. Thus, through AG one can clearly chart the
progressive attainment of access within the country, in addition to the effects this process has had
on South Africa’s hip hop scene. By studying the content and exchanges found on the AG
81
website one finds specific evidence supporting the view that the digitization of the African
experience has led to broader access to both resources and representation, particularly—although
not exclusively—for Afropolitans. In this way, through digitization, once again, the image and
experience of the Afropolitan grows increasingly visible in African hip hop music.
Building a Hip Hop Community
Prior to AG, hip hop was a relatively small and scattered sub-culture in South Africa. The
music first made its way to the country in the early 1980s on VHS and audiocassette tapes,
gaining the most visibility in major ports of entry like Johannesburg and especially Cape Town.
Although both cities were—and continue to be—incredibly central to the development of South
African hip hop, they were not alone. Many other small communities also sprung up during the
Lost Decade, primarily in areas located near urban centers such as Durban, Port Elizabeth and
Grahamstown.
During this introductory period, much as was the case in other nascent hip hop
communities, the bulk of activity in South Africa centered on the distribution and consumption
of foreign (mostly American) hip hop, because there was no local hip hop music being produced
the first decade. As noted in Chapter 2, cassette tapes were the primary medium through which
this music was circulated into the country, and just as in elsewhere, tape trading was a
particularly common practice among early heads, many of who would meet at school or a local
community center to trade music, compare collections, and discuss the latest hip hop news.
92

These informal meetings were hugely significant to the dissemination and growth of early hip
hop culture in South Africa because it was the primary means of distribution. When one
community member acquired a new tape, it would quickly be copied and turned into multiple

92
Over half of the respondents referenced this practice during their interviews, including Milk, R7, R10, R11, R12,
R15, R18, R19 and R20.
82
tapes that could then be passed on to other members during such encounters. Pen pals residing in
North America or Europe were also a central element of this early distribution process, as it was
typically through an international contact that, via post, new music would first make its way into
a community.
Another common practice of early hip hop fans in South Africa was the development and
circulation of hip hop newsletters and magazines. For example, Mob Shop magazine in Cape
Town featured articles and reviews of the local scene, which grew quite popular among hip
hoppers living in the area as a source of information. Around the same time Emile YX of the
group Black Noise was also running a newsletter in Cape Town, which covered similar local
content and related concerns. Much like the hip hop magazines that had already begun to appear
in the United States, these South African-based projects were typically initiated by dedicated
fans or practitioners and motivated by a desire to share information and promote the culture.
However, in contrast to well-known American titles like The Source and XXL, in South Africa
these projects were not supported by a well-established commercial industry. Thus, while these
emerging texts did provide the opportunity to increase access to information about a specific
local community, they were usually limited to only a few hundred printed copies, which rarely
made it much beyond their originating location.
There were several challenges related to hip hop’s distribution and consumption in South
Africa that stifled the early development of the culture. Not surprisingly, the first obstacle most
early-fans faced was limited access. Even in Cape Town and Johannesburg it was not only
difficult for fans to put their hands on new music, but it was also hard for them to get hold of
information about the culture. One early memory of R17 illuminates this point well:
For me…as a [younger] hip hop head I didn’t have access to all of this shit. All I had
access to was a couple of tapes that […] someone posted from the States. The couple of
83
grainy Yo! MTV Raps videos, you know? That was all. It could all fit into one box, the
hip hop I had access to growing up!
93

Because of this limitation, these early materials were highly sought after and frequently shared
within whichever burgeoning local South African communities they happened to enter. For
example, R11 recalled an occasion when a new photograph made its way to the Cape Flats:
So I get a call that [a friend] has got some graffiti that someone sent him by post. We hike
[to] Mitchells Plain from Grassy Park – fucking the whole day it takes us to get there
[because] we walk! We eventually get to his house [and] he’s like “Yoh! I told you
[about the picture] this morning and you only come now?!” There were a whole lot of
kids that [came] from elsewhere, and when we see it…he’s got a picture that’s [quite]
small, and everybody is sitting around [going] “Yoohhhh! How did they get [the graffiti
like] that?” [laughs] And we study that picture the whole day.
94

The severe lack of (and thirst for) information about hip hop is highly visible in this recollection,
which is demonstrated in both the length of the journey made by the speaker, as well as the
number of other people who had presumably made comparable journeys.
One of the biggest causes for this limited access in South Africa was the second major
obstacle fans faced during this early period: isolation. This isolation was experienced on both the
local and national levels, and was the combined result of several important geographic, social,
economic and political factors. Firstly, South Africa is geographically isolated because it is, quite
simply, “the southernmost fucking tip of Africa.”
95
Particularly during the 1980s and early 1990s
when nearly all hip hop was coming out of the United States and Europe, this location was
significantly removed from the flows of cultural products. Thus, fans in South Africa often
experienced a delay in both the information and the music available to them. Once again, an
early memory of R11 is illustrative of this point:
I always wondered what happened to the guys from Beat Street (1984), and so one day I
wrote to a magazine and I asked that question. […] We felt so isolated over here […] I

93
R17, interview by author, Cape Town, South Africa, April 15, 2014.
94
R11, interview by author, Cape Town, South Africa, March 13, 2014.
95
Ibid.
84
needed to ask someone, “What happened to the Rock Steady Crew,” because we couldn’t
find information. […] So I wrote this letter and […] I only found the magazine printed
my story like maybe two months later because to my home address came […] batches of
letters from people […] all over the US. […] [The magazine] had printed my article and
my address, and so people were just like sending me all these letters.
96

Local geography also impeded movement within South Africa, which further
underscored the isolation experienced by its residents and hampered the growth of hip hop
culture in the country. These features include the Kalahari Desert, which occupies much of the
Namibia and Botswana borders in the north; a second, smaller desert in South Africa’s southwest
region called the Karoo; the Great Escarpment, which is a collection of mountain ranges running
from the northwest, through the south, to the northeast part of the country; and the Cape Fold
mountains, which occupy much of the southwest coastal plain (see Figure 3.2). Although both
the highway and railway systems in South Africa were far better developed than in most other
African countries, the transportation options these systems supported were still relatively time
consuming and/or expensive, thus making them largely inaccessible to the teenagers and young
adults who made up these hip hop communities. Therefore, most individuals were relatively
confined by the terrain, which further ensured that these early hip hop scenes remained isolated
from one another.

Figure 3.2
97

96
Ibid.
97
“Southern African Central Plateau” by Oggmus - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia
Commons, Accessed July 28, 2015,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Southern_African_Central_Plateau.jpg#/media/File:Southern_African_Ce
ntral_Plateau.jpg
85
Another reason that early hip hop fans were isolated in South Africa was because of the
restrictions imposed upon them under Apartheid. The Apartheid system, which dominated South
African political policy from 1948-1994, was a complex series of laws and practices that
facilitated the oppression of over 90% of the country’s (non-White) population. One of the most
important laws in this system was the Population Registration Act, which, after it passed in 1950,
required all South Africans to register and receive a designation based on their perceived racial
features and characteristics. In conjunction with this law, later that same year the Group Areas
Act mandated those registered as either “Black” or “Coloured”
98
to relocate to segregated zones
on the outskirts of town, which successfully forced the social separation of these two groups
from Whites as well as from each other. In addition to mitigating the perceived threat these
populations posed to the National Party’s (NP) minority rule, this forced separation also severely
limited cultural exchange between the different racial groups, which further hampered the
circulation and development opportunities of South African hip hop.
As part of the Apartheid system, those who were identified as “Coloured” were granted
certain privileges. These privileges touched on several aspects of life, including voting rights,
better housing and higher-paying jobs. The purpose of this preferential treatment was to
encourage these individuals to support the NP rather than (“Black”) oppositional groups like the
African National Congress (ANC) or the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). Although this tactic

98
In Apartheid South Africa, there were three main racial categories, which included “Black,” “Coloured” and
White. “Black” refers to what were perceived as indigenous Africans, which includes ethnic identities such as
Bapedi, Basotho, Ndebele, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu. “Coloured” is a more complicated
term, as it was essentially invented as a middle designation to encompass everyone in South Africa who was deemed
neither “Black” nor White. However, these individuals typically shared common characteristics of mixed racial
heritage, often an amalgam of European, Indian, Malaysian, West African and Khoi-San heritage, the middle three
of which were forcibly brought to South Africa as slaves or indentured servants by Europeans. I have chosen to
place both “Black” and “Coloured” in quotes to underscore the imposed rather than self-elected status of the
individuals identified as such under Apartheid. In contrast, White was a self-designated term, as they were the
individuals responsible for developing and assigning racial designations through that system. In a similar vein, I
have opted to use Black without quotation marks to indicate when it is a self-elected identity.
86
had become significantly less successful by the start of the 1980s, it had, nevertheless, created a
highly stratified society where racial lines also denoted economic standing. This stratification is
key to understanding the development of early South African hip hop communities because it
meant that mostly those young people designated as “Coloured” had access to the tools and the
means of participation.
99
For example, “Coloured” youth were more likely than their “Black”
counterparts to live in a home with electricity, and to have access to a small disposable income
that could be used to purchase music or magazines, mail letters, attend shows or participate in
other hip hop related activities. In addition, these youngsters were also more likely to live in a
household that had an audiocassette player, a VHS player and/or a TV, or to know someone in
their neighborhood who did. Similarly, these families were also more likely to have friends or
family members living in North America or Europe who could send new materials or music back
to them in South Africa.
While these privileges did make it easier for “Coloured” youth to participate in early hip
hop, their economic advantages were only advantages relative to the circumstances of all non-
White people living in South Africa during this period. Particularly as the Lost Decade wore on
and the international community grew increasingly critical of Apartheid, global economic and
political policies began to apply pressure on the South African government to dismantle its
oppressive system. Although this shift was encouraging because it signified international
recognition of the struggle against Apartheid, it also enhanced the economic and political

99
Thus, much of the work on hip hop in South Africa has focused specifically on the embrace of the culture and
music by the “Coloured” community. For example, please see Daniel Hammett, “Local Beats to Global Rhythms:
Coloured Student Identity and Negotiations of Global Cultural Imports in Cape Town, South Africa,” Social &
Cultural Geography, vol. 10, no. 4 (June 2009), 403-19; Marc D. Perry, “Global Black Self-Fashionings: Hip Hop
as Diasporic Space,” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, vol. 15, no. 6, 635-64; and, Jane Battersby,
“Sometimes it feels like I’m not Black enough”: Recast(e)ing Coloured through South African Hip-Hop as a
Postcolonial Text,” Shifting Selves: Post-Apartheid Essays on Mass Media, Culture and Identity, edited by Herman
Wasserman and Sean Jacobs (Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2003), 109-29.
87
isolation of those on the ground in South Africa by increasingly limiting their sense of
connection with the rest of the world. In doing so, this political isolation not only hampered
cultural flows of hip hop by making it harder to access the music and communities from abroad,
but it also helped to augment the feelings of marginality common within these local communities
of hip hop heads.
These feelings of marginality were also closely linked to the third major obstacle early-
fans faced, which was their invisibility. At the time, there were few media representations of
South African life that accurately reflected the experiences of the country’s non-White
populations because these individuals did not have access to the tools of representation. As a
result, many youth, particularly in the “Coloured” communities, embraced hip hop in part
because it reflected the life experiences of African Americans, which shared many similarities to
their own, such as a history of slavery, a loss of cultural identity, ongoing race-based oppression,
poverty and marginalization. As R7, one of the moderators on AG explained, “the nearest thing
that we could cling to that represented us was African American culture. So [hip hop] music
spoke […] to us, and I think that was the crux.”
100
Particularly as the decade wore on and
resistance against Apartheid grew more militant, the sub-genre known as “political” or
“conscious” hip hop, featuring groups like Public Enemy and artists like KRS-One, became
especially popular among many South African fans.
This appropriation of African American cultural products as a means of expressing South
African (especially “Coloured”) identity became an attractive alternative for many heads in these
early communities. Going on to discuss his own personal engagement with hip hop culture R7
continued:

100
R7, interview by author, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, February 7, 2014.
88
I wanted the world to know about us because our voices were not visible. We were not on
your TV where you can just switch on and be like, “Hey, there’s Days of our Lives
tell[ing] the story of people in South Africa.” [So] I’ve always been on this mission. I
want people to know that we make music.
101

This last statement is particularly significant because it reveals not only a sense of invisibility,
but also a corresponding desire to be seen (and heard), which was a common reaction to this
experience among non-White South Africans at the time and later became the key transformation
of the Afropolitan occurring through digitization. In addition, this thirst for visibility was also
often, for many early practitioners, characteristic of their motivation to produce and participate in
hip hop culture, which became more common in the following decade.
102

However, this problem of invisibility was not easily alleviated. First, as demonstrated in
the discussion above, limited access to hip hop and isolation from other communities were not
simply external problems between South African hip hoppers and the international community.
On the contrary, both issues posed serious obstacles to the cultivation and circulation of early
culture within the country. Thus, South African fans and practitioners were often also largely
unknown to each other, particularly if those individuals came from two geographically disparate
communities.
103

Additionally, the act of embracing hip hop culture itself, which was highly indicative of
the Afropolitan worldview of acceptance and hybridity, also contributed to the invisibility of

101
Ibid.
102
Another AG member, R10, supported this view: “I think that the driving force for a lot of [South African] artists
is still that, there is a voice that can be had with hip hop that may not be had in other mechanism or other channels.
And so it gives them an opportunity to address social economic inequities in the South African context. I think that
hip hop continues to be a valuable tool to do that.” R10, interview by author, Cape Town, South Africa, March 12,
2014.
103
This was also true of hip hop heads residing in the same community. For example, R20 recalled that he did not
meet one of his “hip hop friends” until later in life, despite having grown up near one another: “I was talking with
somebody yesterday—the guy I came here with, the tall guy that was with me—and I was saying [this] to him, [and]
you know, he’s the same. We were relating to each other, like our influences are the same. And ironically he lives
like a street away from me, where my grandmother lives and where I fell in love with hip hop. And [but?] we didn’t
know each other, right? We met each other later in life.” R20, interview by author, Port Elizabeth, South Africa,
April 27, 2014.
89
early South African fans because, as noted in Chapter 1, the genre was perceived as a Western
rather than an African cultural practice. As R7 recalled, “even following hip hop at that point,
people [in South Africa] frowned on you: ‘You are doing this American thing; it’s not
African.’”
104
Thus, by identifying with this foreign sub-culture early hip hop heads often became
somewhat marginalized from mainstream society, which only strengthened their desire to seek
out one another.
Going Online
The emergence of the Internet in South Africa during the early 1990s was an important
intervention in the evolution of this hip hop community because it alleviated many of these
challenges early fans were struggling with. Most immediately, it provided improved access to
music and more up-to-date information about various scenes. As one early fan recalled, “the first
thing I wanted to do research on was the music—the whole hip hop thing. Cause now there’s
Internet.”
105
In addition to improving access to information, the Internet also created new
opportunities for visibility. As R7 described, his early engagement with the Internet was an effort
to increase his sense of visibility online: “and I went on—there wasn’t Google at that point, it
was like www.thesource.com and you are part of this community where, you know, you want
your voice to be heard.”
106
Significantly, through this statement R7 also reveals his perception of
the Internet as a tool for community formation, which was the third and perhaps most significant
contribution of the new tool.
Notably, the early Internet in South Africa was primarily available only in universities
and large companies, which limited its user population to a relatively small group of educated

104
R7, interview by author, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, February 7, 2014.
105
Milk, interview by author, Johannesburg, South Africa, April 7, 2014.
106
R7, interview by author, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, February 7, 2014.
90
middle and upper class elites that were also more prone to embrace Afropolitan worldviews.
Even as the technology began to gain visibility and popularity in the country, during this early
period it remained a privileged space due to the high cost of Internet service, the high cost of
technical equipment necessary to access the service, such as a computer, software, and telephone
landline, and the specialized skills required to use all the above. Significantly, for these reasons,
the same group of Afropolitans who had historically had better access to the circulation of early
hip hop were also the most likely to be privileged with access to this new virtual space. Thus,
many hip hop heads in South Africa began to make their way online over the course of the
1990s, in search of new music, information, visibility and to connect with one another.
The first South African-based hip hop website to emerge online is a clear illustration of
this history. HipHop.co.za (HH) was started in 1995 by “Hip Hop Headrush” radio show host
Mass Dosage as a supplement to his campus radio program at Rhodes University. As a computer
science major, Mass Dosage managed to build the site and host it on the university servers until
1999 when, after landing a job with a multimedia company, he moved back to Johannesburg.
Rather than giving up the website, which had until that point functioned as a space for
information about show playlists and the occasional downloadable audio clip, he decided to
revamp and expand it to include interviews, video content of performances, and downloadable
tracks used to promote the new music of interested artists. Although HH only averaged a few
thousand visitors per year, most were accessing the website from within South Africa, which
underscores both the thirst for hip hop related content in the country and the small number of
individuals residing there who were privileged with early access to the space.
91

Figure 3.3
107

Two years after the emergence of HH, and only a few months after Thomas Gesthuizen’s
African hip hop website went live in the Netherlands, Milk (a.k.a. Milk Daddy), who was born in
Namibia during the late 1970s and relocated to Cape Town in 1989, launched AG from his home
in Cape Town, South Africa (Figure 3.3). Initially, AG was a static page much like HH, that had
to be updated manually and did not allow much opportunity for direct community interactions.
However, like HH, AG nevertheless became a popular destination for heads living in southern
Africa because it provided relatively consistent access to information about the music and culture
of hip hop communities from all over the region. Whereas previously these communities had
been largely isolated from one another, through AG individuals in South Africa were finally able
to stay informed and connected to what was happening in scenes all around the country. In
response, through AG hip hop heads from all over South Africa began imagining themselves as
part of a coherent national community.

107
Image courtesy of Milk
92

Figure 3.4
108

As outlined above, one of the most immediate draws of the AG website was its ability to
disseminate information. In the screenshot of AG shown in Figure 3.4 above, for example, the
emphasis on information is evident in the prominent placement of news and updates on the
website. Significantly, under the heading “Latest South African Hip Hop News” visitors could
access information about the Johannesburg-based group Skwatta Camp as well as the Cape
Town-based group Black Noise. In addition, visitors were also able to access information about
current music and culture news in the United States, as well as read reviews, look at photos, and
find new resources by following the links in the “Breakdown” section found on the left-hand side
of the page.
In addition, AG was also attractive to early heads because it functioned as a space where
they could attain visibility as individuals and as a culture. As Milk explained, his initial

108
Screenshot of AG as it was on March 2, 2001, taken from “AfricasGateway.com,” Wayback Machine, Accessed
April 21, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20010302033525/http://www.africasgateway.com:80/. Significantly,
although this image shows the website as it was in 2001, the layout and content is largely the same as it was in 1997.
The most notable differences in the 2001 version are a few more images, a slightly different font and the colors had
changed from orange and yellow to purple and white.
93
motivation for creating AG was, in large part, due to the value he recognized in Cape Town’s
Mob Shop magazine as a platform that offered visibility to local South African artists:
And they would interview local people…it’s kind of how I got into that. “Okay, that’s a
good thing to do.” Like you are now giving space for these artists—for everybody to
know who is doing what and where. [Besides Mob Shop magazine and Emile YX’s
newsletter] there wasn’t really any platform for artists to make themselves known.
109

Because of this realization, Milk decided to develop AG as an “eZine” that featured local artists
and gave them exposure in much the same way that these fanzines and print newsletters had done
previously. In addition, Milk also included information on foreign (typically American)
musicians, which was a deliberate juxtaposition meant to demonstrate the equality of local
African artists with the international stars so often admired by community members. Similarly,
R7 also discussed the inclusion of popular American artists on the site, explaining the practice as
a sort of guerrilla marketing strategy used to drive traffic to the website. Someone doing a search
for “Chuck D,” for example, might make their way to AG for a featured story on the American
rapper, but stay after discovering the music of Skwatta Kamp or other local artists featured
elsewhere on the page.

Figure 3.5
110

109
Milk, interview by author, Johannesburg, South Africa, 4/7/2014.
110
Data based on information provided on AG. Formal content data located at: “Archives,” AfricasGateway.com
(1997-2011), Accessed 12/3/2015, http://www.africasgateway.com/archives/. User-generated data located at:
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
Formal v User-Generated Content
Forum Posts
Posts
94
Most importantly, however, AG encouraged the growth and cohesion of a South African
hip hop community by providing a space where individuals from all around the country could
interact and share experiences with one another. Although to a certain extent these relationships
were first cultivated through the formal content and comment sections available on the website,
the AG forums, which were introduced on February 7, 2001, quickly became the central focus of
activity within the website. Following the introduction of the forums, new membership on AG
increased significantly, and for many this feature became the primary purpose of their visits.
111

To underscore the significance of AG’s forums section, Figure 3.5 above provides a visual
comparison of the new posts per year in both the formal and user-generated sections of the
website. As is evident through this comparison, the formal content—which includes many
traditional music journalism items such as current event and news articles, album reviews,
featured artist discussions and opinion columns—consisted of roughly a few hundred posts per
year. In contrast, the user-generated content in the forums section retained significantly higher
levels of activity, often reaching into the thousands rather than the hundreds of new posts each
year.
Notably, the solidification of AGs early hip hop community was enabled in large part by
the many commonalities that characterized the group, many of which strongly embodied the
Afropolitan worldview. Generally, these early individuals tended to be educated young
heterosexual “Coloured” boys, who were historically, as detailed above, the first group of
individuals to access and embrace hip hop music in South Africa. The country’s first

“General Discussion,” Africasgateway.com (1997-2011), Accessed 12/3/2015,
http://www.africasgateway.com/forums/index.php?board=12.0
111
For example, one community member recalled, “If I was going on to the Internet it was that. I could have said
like, ‘Yes I’m logging onto AfricasGateway,’ not ‘the Internet’ because I’d not do anything but read posts and
interact with people [in the forums].” R20, interview by author, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, April 27, 2014.
95
commercially released hip hop album Our World (1990) is a prime illustration of this trend, as
the group who released it—Prophets of Da City (POC)—fits well into this category. Other early
groups like Black Noise also coincided with this trend, as did the first all-female group Godessa,
whose visibility as the nation’s first female collective only serves to underscore women’s
engagement with hip hop in this early period as the exception rather than the rule.
Frequently, such demographic similarities also translated into relatively uniform
worldviews, which featured heavily in both the music and conversations that circulated in the
community surrounding it. Knowledge of and love for politically conscious American hip hop,
for example, was common amongst most early community members, which reflects the
attraction and exposure to hip hop these individuals shared during the previous decade. Most
early heads also tended to practice multiple elements within the culture, which included
breakdancing, graffiti writing, DJing, MCing, and a fifth element termed “knowledge of self.”
Significantly, among these individuals this fifth element was held in particularly high regard, and
can be loosely understood as a political, social, cultural and historical self-awareness enacted
through hip hop. As R10 explained:
To me, Knowledge of Self is the promotion of being self-aware, loving and respecting
yourself and recognizing your status in the world – and not accepting where society has
placed you. It is ultimately the critical cornerstone of hip hop. It says, “You don’t provide
adequate recreational facilities and opportunities for young black people, well, we’ll go
and make our own.” But this is not quite how it was explained to me. Mostly I engaged it
through people like Emile (and his lyrics and other writings) and through Shamiel X.
Their understanding of KOS is adopting a critical political stance, being oppositional, not
accepting the status quo, using hip hop’s expressive tools to stand up for yourself.
112

In addition, the Black Consciousness Movement, which was a social movement that first arose in
South Africa during the 1960s in opposition to Apartheid, also became a notable characteristic of
young practitioners’ articulation of identity in early South African hip hop, as many opted to

112
R10, interview by author (via email), July 30, 2014.
96
define themselves as Black rather than either as “Coloured” or through tribal affiliations like
Xhosa, Ndebele or Zulu.
Notably, members of this early South African community also exhibited high levels of
misogyny and homophobia, which were both engaged frequently to delineate belonging. On AG,
for example, many early conversations in the forums section involved displays of masculine
heterosexuality, which were most frequently articulated through discussions of sexual attraction
to and/or encounters with women. Terms like “fag,” “bitch,” “hoe” and “homo” also littered the
conversation boards, and were often employed as markers of non-belonging against visitors or
artists viewed unfavorably by those within the community. For example, in a 2003 thread titled
“Is Ja Rule Gay?” one user responded to a comment assessing the artist’s music unfavorably by
stating “fuck ja rule.. he mos def is gay..”
113
Later that year another user employed femininity as
a general insult to other artists, telling community members “[if] you wanna have a laugh, check
out rotten.com, this is for all those fake ass femcees that claim to b hardcore. stomach that shit
fuckaz.”
114
While significantly, not all AG community members felt this way,
115
it was,
nevertheless, the established norm within the group, and was used frequently throughout AG’s
lifespan as a standard means of communicating and articulating belonging to the community.
For these reasons, AG enjoyed a central role in the formation of South Africa’s national
hip hop community. From its launch in 1997 until its initial descent in 2008, AG brought fans
together by providing a space where they could share music and access information from
disparate local scenes, gradually replacing their feelings of isolation, marginality and invisibility

113
briCK, Reply #3, “Is Ja Rule Gay?” (1/27/2003), Accessed July 24, 2017,
http://www.africasgateway.com/forums/index.php/topic,45.0.html
114
Anonymous, “netcees = femcees” (9/12/2003), Accessed July 24, 2017,
http://www.africasgateway.com/forums/index.php/topic,27987.0.html
115
Such as R10 revealed in his interview, for example, where he noted a discomfort with these discussions as they
were occurring yet also feeling unable to protest them.
97
with a shared sense of belonging. As R7 recalled, “I’ve always been passionate about hip hop,
[but] there were no other avenues [before AG]. I didn’t know anybody else that loved hip hop
like me.” Through the AG forums, however, “[t]here started [to be] more kids that were into hip
hop. Like ‘Hey,’ you know? Sharing their music. So it formulated this community.”
116
For nearly
a decade, this community continued to grow, eventually situating AG as the online destination
for hip hop in South Africa. In this way, much like its name suggests, AG functioned as a virtual
gateway into the South African hip hop community, until the community eventually outgrew the
space.
The Paradox of Success
Ironically, it was precisely the successfulness of AGs community formation that
ultimately contributed to its eventual decline. As noted above, one of Milk’s primary goals in
launching the AG website was to promote international and South African hip hop music to
increase its visibility and popularity. However, as the number of fans increased and the
community expanded, the feelings of marginality and isolation once associated with such
fandom dissipated, reducing much of the incentive that had once driven early fans together. In
addition, the process of digitization that had begun in the 1990s, accelerated significantly in the
new millennium. This acceleration further expanded access to resources and representation
among Africans, growing the middleclass and increasing their visibility. However, as this group
expanded, diverging viewpoints also became more prominent. On AG, these fractures worked in
tandem with the loss of marginality to further accelerate the dissolution of community and a
unified identity.

116
R7, interview by author, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, February 7, 2014.
98
Year
Internet Users in SA
2000 5.3%
2001 6.3%
2002 6.7%
2003 7.0%
2004 8.4%
2005 7.5%
2006 7.6%
2007 8.1%
2008 8.4%
2009 10.0%

Figure 3.6
117

At the dawn of the new millennium the Internet was still a relatively small part of South
African life, with just over five percent of the national population involved in online activities.
This small number was due in large part to the high cost of Internet service, which resulted from
the monopoly South Africa’s national communications company Telkom had been granted
through the Telecommunications Act of 1996. However, over the course of this decade South
African ICT policy went through two significant changes, both of which helped to make the
Internet more affordable. First, the Telecommunications Amendment Act was passed in 2001,
which ended the “exclusivity period” in South Africa, and marked the emergence of what
Lucienne Abrahams terms the era of “managed liberalization.” Over the next four years this
policy helped facilitate a gradual opening of the ICT market by introducing the opportunity for
modest competition in both the cellular and fixed-line sectors, which caused prices to become
more reasonable. Significantly, however, competition and price reductions were rather limited
during this period, and did not undergo meaningful transformation until the second major shift
initiated by the Electronic Telecommunications Act in 2005. With this most recent act South
African ICT policy ushered in what Abrahams describes as the “information society period,”

117
The World Bank, “Internet users (per 100) people),” World Bank Group (2015), Accessed November 9, 2015,
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.P2/countries
99
which finally allowed extensive competition and further reduced prices. Thus, by the close of
2009 Internet service had become significantly more affordable, which contributed to a doubling
of penetration rates, as is shown above in Figure 3.6.

Figure 3.7
118

118
Images courtesy of Steven Song, “African Undersea Cables – A History,” SlideShare (March 1, 2011), Accessed
November 24, 2015, http://www.slideshare.net/ssong/african-undersea-cables-a-history
100
The second major factor that contributed to falling Internet access prices was the
development of ICT infrastructure. More specifically, the introduction of undersea cables to the
African continent dramatically expanded the capacity of the Internet available in that region,
which ultimately led to lower service costs for users. As is illustrated through the images in
Figure 3.7 above, this development progressed rather slowly during the 2000s, with only four
major cables going live over the course of the decade. However, the number of active undersea
expanded substantially after 2010, jumping to sixteen in 2015 (please see Figure 3.7 below).
Thus far, the most significant of these new cables to the growth of penetration rates in South
Africa have been the Eastern Africa Submarine System (EASSy) and the West African Cable
System (WACS). EASSy came online west coast of the continent, connecting Highbridge in the
United Kingdom with Yzerfontein, South Africa, which is quite near to Cape Town. Together,
these high-capacity cable systems offer an additional 15 Tbit/s of bandwidth, with EASSy
contributing over 10 Tbit/s
119
and WACS contributing 5.12 Tbit/s.
120
Currently, a third cable,
known as the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) cable, which will add another 5.12 Tbit/s in
bandwidth capacity, is under construction to connect Penmarch, France with Cape Town, South
Africa. The first phase of this project running from France to Gabon went live in December
2012; however, the second phase, which will run from Gabon to South Africa, is not yet
complete.
121

In addition to reducing service costs through the introduction of undersea cables, Internet
penetration rates also improved in South Africa due to increases in public access locations. These

119
“Welcome to EASSy,” EASSy.org, Nairobi, Kenya (2010), Accessed November 29, 2015, http://www.eassy.org
120
“African consortium WACS to extend its submarine cable system from Portugal to the UK with Alcatel-
Lucent’s 40G ultra-fast optical technology,” (Press Release), Alcatel-Lucent (August 24, 2010), Accessed
November 29, 2015, https://www.alcatel-lucent.com/press/2010/002176
121
“Overview,” ACE – Africa Coast to Europe – Submarine Cable, Accessed November 29, 2015, https://www.ace-
submarinecable.com/ace/default/EN/all/ace_en/the_project.htm
101

Figure 3.8
122

public access locations include public libraries, Internet cafés and telecenters, the last of which
are typically found in rural areas where access to ICT had historically been low. Significantly,
the rise in the number of these facilities during the first decade of the millennium was due in
large part to the government’s initiative of universal access, which strove to ensure all citizens
had access to ICT. Consequently, telecenters typically housed a variety of telecommunications
equipment, including telephone, fax, copy machine and computers, usually with Internet access.
The third major development that contributed to growth in South Africa’s Internet
penetration rates was the introduction of social media, which pulled users online. The first of

122
Steven Song, “Sub-saharan Undersea Cables in 2018 – maybe (version 42),” Flickr (August 2015), Accessed
November 28, 2015, https://www.flickr.com/photos/ssong/20854122318/in/album-72157625051406818/
102
these websites to gain mainstream appeal was Friendster, which was founded in March 2002 by
Jonathan Abrams and Peter Chin. The following year, MySpace was launched, and by 2006 had
become the most popular social networking website in the world. Significantly, MySpace was
particularly influential to the promotion of independent music, which is best underscored through
its formation of a music label under the MySpace umbrella in 2005. Although both platforms
were landmark developments in social media, the global availability of Facebook beginning in
2006 created the heaviest draw online for South Africans. In large part, this heavy influence was
a product of timing, as the latter half of the decade saw considerable improvements in access due
to factors like the Electronic Communications Act of 2005 as outlined above. Thus, South
Africans began to flood online in the latter half of the decade, often with the primary goal of
interacting with friends and family on Facebook.
The draw of social media was significantly enhanced by the increased availability of
Smartphone technology, which helped to ease access and therefore expand penetration rates
since 2010. Smartphones first gained popularity in the late 2000s with the release of the first-
generation iPhone by Apple in 2007. This introduction was significant because it provided a less
expensive and more convenient alternative to fixed-line service Internet access. However,
Smartphones like Apple’s iPhone were incredibly costly then, and even now have continued to
remain a rather elite product with the most current models selling at roughly $1000 in South
Africa.
123
However, on September 6, 2010 Chinese telecommunications equipment and services
company Huawei released an Android Smartphone in Kenya that had a price tag of only $100.
124

123
For example, when the iPhone 6s was first released in South Africa, Vodacom priced the device between
R14,000 - R19,100, which, based on exchange rates at that time, equates to roughly $1000 - $1350. Staff Writer,
“Apple iPhone 6s – first Vodacom pricing,” MyBroadband.co.za (October 9, 2015), Accessed November 29, 2015
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/smartphones/141422-apple-iphone-6s-first-vodacom-pricing.html
124
Wayan Vota, “$100 Huawei Android Mobile Phone is Bringing the Netbook Revolution to Smartphones,” ICT
Works (September 7, 2010), Accessed November 29, 2015, http://www.ictworks.org/2010/09/07/100-huawei-
android-mobile-phone-bringing-netbook-revolution-smartphones/
103
This event, which was specifically aimed at catering to consumers in the developing world, was
revolutionary and highly effective in expanding cell phone accessibility in those markets.
Subsequently, several other companies also began manufacturing sub-$100 Smartphones, which
strongly contributed to the growth in both mobile subscriptions and Internet penetration rates as
shown below in Figure 3.9.
Year
Internet Users in SA Cell Phone
Subscriptions in SA
2010 24.0% 98.0%
2011 34.0% 123.0%
2012 41.0% 131.0%
2013 46.5% 146.0%
2014 49.0% 150.0%
2015 51.9% 164.5%

Figure 3.9
125

Finally, this increase in mobile Internet technology also led to a rise in the demand for
wireless broadband access, which consequently also rose significantly during this period. Much
like the introduction of Smartphone technology, which had been initiated in 2007 through the
introduction of Apple’s iPhone, this shift toward wireless broadband had also begun to take form
during the previous decade.
126
However, it was not until the advances in bandwidth capacity and
sub-$100 Smartphone technology emerged in the 2010s, that the demand for wireless access
grew dramatically. Significantly, this growth in wireless Internet availability allowed individuals

125
The World Bank, “Internet users (per 100) people),” World Bank Group (2015), Accessed November 9, 2015,
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.P2/countries; The World Bank, “Individuals using the Internet
(% of population),” World Bank Group (2017), Accessed May 6, 2017
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS?locations=ZA&view=chart; The World Bank, “Mobile
cellular subscriptions (per 100 people),” World Bank Group (2015), Accessed on November 9, 2015,
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.CEL.SETS.P2/countries; and, The Word Bank, “Mobile cellular subscriptions
(per 100 people),” World Bank Group (2017), Accessed May 6, 2017
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.CEL.SETS.P2?locations=ZA&view=chart
126
For example, the growing demand for wireless broadband is noted in an anonymous article published in a
telecommunications trade journal in 2006. “South Africa Users Opt for Wireless Broadband.” Africa & Middle East
Telecom 7, no. 7 (07, 2006), 16, Accessed November 29, 2015
http://search.proquest.com.libproxy2.usc.edu/docview/191684395?accountid=14749
104
to access the Web not only from their Smartphone devices, but also from other technologies like
tablets and laptop computers. Thus, wireless broadband or “Wifi” has also increased accessibility
during the current decade by transforming many businesses and public places like coffee shops
and restaurants into inexpensive or free venues for Internet access.
Together, these advances in digital technology had a noticeable effect on the popularity
of hip hop in South Africa, particularly in the production, distribution and consumption of the
music. First, it is worth noting that the cost of personal computers decreased significantly in the
new millennium, making the independent production of music far more accessible to everyday
people.
127
Similarly, other recording equipment also became less expensive and therefore more
accessible, such as microphones, headphones, speakers, etc. In addition, the introduction of new
tools that work in conjunction with personal computers often circumvented the need for costly
processes previously done by professionals, such as a DAW/Audio Interface combo, which
allows users to record, edit and mix music themselves all from a personal computer. At the same
time, the Gross National Income (GNI) based on purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita in
South Africa also increased significantly since 2000, going from $7520 to $12,860 in 2016.
128
In
this way, these combined factors made it far easier for individuals to participate in the production
of music, which resulted in a significant number of independent producers emerging in the
country during this period.
However, the distribution and consumption of music were by far the most significantly
altered practices during this decade. The emergence of Napster in 1999 allowed users to share
mp3 music files directly with other users all around the world. Not surprisingly, this innovation,

127
For example, the iMac desktop computer dropped 33% over the decade, going from $1499 in 1999 to only $999
in 2009.
128
The World Bank, “GNI per capita, PPP (current international $),” World Bank Group (2017), Accessed July 26,
2017, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.PP.CD/countries?display=default
105
which largely circumvented the formal music industry and denied it significant sums of capital,
had a major impact on this industry, as has been widely charted through declining music sales
since the turn of the new millennium. Therefore, record companies responded aggressively with
anti-piracy campaigns and copyright infringement lawsuits, the latter of which, for example, was
responsible for shutting down Napster in 2001. Although several other companies offering
similar services like Kazaa and LimeWire also emerged during this brief period, they were met
with a similar fate and thus did not have a long lifespan online.
In response to the emergence of these file-sharing practices, Apple released iTunes
alongside its first iPod in 2001. Two years later Apple launched iTunes 4, which was the first
version to be compatible with Microsoft Windows and the first to feature the iTunes Music
Store.
129
This Music Store was significant because it was the first legal alternative to P2P file-
sharing sites, and offered the opportunity for record companies to tap into this burgeoning mp3
market. Notably, iTunes was not available in South Africa until the following decade on
December 4, 2012;
130
however, by this time more than half of all music sales were made through
the platform, indicating a significant transformation in the distribution of music both inside and
outside the music industry. Notably, subsequent music distribution websites like Soundcloud and
Bandcamp built upon the growing popularity of the mp3 format generated through platforms like
iTunes, and provided alternative venues for distribution to independent artists in the latter half of
the decade (both launched in 2007).

129
Julianne Pepitone and David Goldman, “The evolution of iTunes,” CNN Tech (April 23, 2013), Accessed
November 25, 2015, http://money.cnn.com/gallery/technology/2013/04/25/itunes-history/
130
“Apple Launches iTunes Store in Russia, Turkey, India, South Africa & 52 Additional Countries Today,” (Press
Release), Apple Inc. (December 4, 2012), Accessed November 24, 2015,
https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/12/04Apple-Launches-iTunes-Store-in-Russia-Turkey-India-South-Africa-
52-Additional-Countries-Today.html
106
The other major development to occur was the launch of YouTube, which took place on
February 14, 2005. Prior to this event it was difficult for everyday people to post video content
online. However, YouTube’s interface made this process easy, which significantly opened the
opportunities for independent artists to produce and release quality music videos outside the
formal structure of the music industry. Additionally, as Cecilia H. Suhr notes in her study Social
Media and Music: The Digital Field of Cultural Production, YouTube also influenced both the
consumption of music as well as its path to popularity. Whereas previously radio and music
channels like South Africa’s Channel O had been the primary venues through which fans could
access information on the latest music, YouTube provided an alternative space that allowed fans
to be less reliant on formal structures. In doing so, YouTube also facilitated the development of
niche markets and the further diversification of music genres by helping artists and audiences to
connect with each other.
Alongside these changes occurring within the music industry, the music itself also
expanded and transformed. As noted earlier in Chapter 2, the 2000s were a decade of
experimentation in hip hop music on the continent. Whereas the 1990s had been a period of
mimicry, when African hip hoppers produced music that borrowed heavily from American
sounds, in the 2000s African artists began to develop their own sounds by rapping in local
languages, incorporating local instrumentation and discussing local subject matter. In South
Africa, these changes began to appear somewhat earlier (POC began rapping in “vernac”
131
in
the early 1990s); however, in the second decade of South African hip hop these developments
began to take root. Since 2010, while instrumentation and subject matter have also continued to
grow more locally focused, lyrics performed in national languages other than English have been

131
Short for “vernacular,” used broadly to reference any language other than English.
107
the most heavily emphasized development in recent years. As one featured article published on
AHH in March of 2015 explains:
Unlike in the United States, where hip hop sub-genres are differentiated by their cities of
origin and lyrical themes (i.e. hardcore hip hop – New York; trap – party rap), here in
South Africa they are distinguished by the languages they represent. Each of the eleven
official languages has its own specific hip hop movement. For instance, hip hop in
isiXhosa is called Spaza, in Tshivenda it’s Venrap, and Sesotho rap is called Tshepe
while isiZulu hip hop is better known as Kasi Rap.
132

Significantly, this article is titled “Morumokwano and linguistic turf wars in South African hip
hop [emphasis added],” which underscores the heightened emphasis placed on language in the
nation’s hip hop culture in recent years, as well as the growing tensions surrounding these
distinctions in response.
In conjunction with developing a more localized sound, hip hop also became more
mainstream in South Africa in the new millennium, and with it so too did the Afropolitan
identity. Whereas in the 1980s and 1990s hip hop culture and fans had been marginalized based
on the perception that hip hop was an American rather than an African cultural practice, in the
2000s going forward, this perception started to change. As part of this shift, formal industries
like record companies and marketing executives began to recognize the earning potential of hip
hop culture, and in general more local hip hop started to be produced and sold. In this way, hip
hop in South African became significantly more accessible for people to purchase and consume,
thus providing the music and its fans with greater acceptance and visibility.
The development of hip hop competitions in South Africa is one clear example of hip
hop’s shifting position in the country. Most notably, the emergence of the South African Hip
Hop Awards (SAHHA) in 2012 is a significant indicator of the institutionalization of hip hop, as

132
RS Tshesane, “Morumokwano and linguistic turf wars in South African hip hop,” Africanhiphop.com (March 17,
2015), Accessed November 30, 2015, http://www.africanhiphop.com/morumokwano-linguistic-turf-wars-south-
african-hip-hop/
108
it is a highly publicized event, with a current total of thirty-one different award categories
spanning everything from “Best Dance Crew” to “Best Local Brand” to “Best Graffiti Artist” to
“Best Digital Sales.”
133
Much like similar awards ceremonies in other countries including the
United States, this event is primarily centered on the presentation of awards, sprinkled with a few
performances by select artists. In contrast, the African Hip Hop Indaba, which was founded in
2000 by Emile of Black Noise, is far more competition and community-centered, featuring
several days of dance competitions that culminate with a final awards ceremony.
134

Figure 3.10
135

Significantly, this mainstreaming is also evident through the incorporation of hip hop
music and aesthetics in marketing of unrelated products, which has occurred in many
international markets including South Africa. For example, Figure 3.10 above is a screenshot

133
For a full list of categories please see “South African Hip Hop Awards: Categories,” SA Hip Hop Awards,
Accessed December 4, 2015, http://www.sahiphopawards.com/p/history.html
134
For example, please see the full 2015 schedule at “Program,” African Hip Hop Indaba (2015), Accessed
December 4, 2015, http://www.africanhiphopindaba.co.za/program
135
Screenshot taken on December 2, 2015 from MTN television commercial with the tag line “New World” posted
on YouTube. Significantly, the video was published on Janurary 12, 2013 with the phrase “Join the New World with
MTN and live connected.” Youtube.com, Accessed December 2, 2015,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA6QSuHmNJQ
109
from a TV commercial for MTN that first aired in South Africa in December of 2012.
136
In
addition to the visible aesthetics of hip hop presented through the clothing, posture and
stylization of the primary character (shown in the center of the frame on top of the plastic horse),
the entire commercial is filmed like a hip hop music video, and the protagonist raps lyrics over a
hip hop beat throughout. In the scene shown below, for example, he tells the audience: “Swag is
something you hear us say a lot / Swag is something that we all got,” before the chorus breaks in
telling the audience “Welcome to the new world.” The protagonist’s line is illustrative of this
point because it features the term “swag,” meaning “swagger” or “style,” which was initially
popularized through hip hop culture in the United States. By including it in this South African
commercial for a cellular company, it not only demonstrates the ongoing influence of American
popular culture in spaces outside the United States, but also reveals the increasingly mainstream
appeal of hip hop culture in South Africa. Significantly, this ad was part of a new MTN
campaign intended to suggest that, “emerging markets are on the cusp of a brand-new world.
This is a world where the distinction between the first and the third world no longer exists,
thanks to digitization [emphasis added].”
137

The effects of these developments on AG were a significant growth in registered users,
but an overall decline in the cohesion of its community. Back in 2003, which was the first year of
available data for AG’s general forum, the AG community was still relatively small, and most
interactions taking place there were quite personal. Birthday wishes and death notifications were
extremely common during this early period, and many members also used the boards as a kind of

136
“MTN launches global brand campaign to articulate new strategic direction,” Media Release, MTN (date
unknown), Accessed December 2, 2015,
http://www.mtn.co.rw/Content/Pages/188/MTN_launches_global_brand_campaign_to_articulate_new_strategic_dir
ection
137
Ibid.
110
public text messaging system to get hold of one another. At the time, most AG regulars were hip
hop practitioners, meaning that most everyone frequenting the site was actively participating in
the creation of hip hop culture in some form or another, whether that be as a graffiti artist, an
MC, a producer, a DJ, a break dancer, or by performing some other related role that supported
these early communities. In all cases, these regular participants were committed hip hop fans,
and they used AG as an extension of the tape-trading meetings described earlier. Thus, most of
the activities that took place in this forum in 2003 were about sharing information or music, and
building or maintaining community connections.
To clarify these characteristics, Figure 3.11 shows a screenshot of the general forum in
2003 covering a handful of conversations that took place in August of that year. In addition to
illustrating the small yet active nature of this online community (RuSh, in particular, starts and
ends several conversation threads during this period), many of the threads also speak to the
personal nature of these relationships. For example, in a thread ending on August 17 Milk
discusses a drive by shooting that took place in his neighborhood. On a lighter note, in a thread
titled “milkdaddy to star in pron ft petricia de lille and nkosazama” also ending on August 17,
RuSh teases site owner Milk by joking that he has discovered a sex tape the owner supposedly
starred in. Although the topics addressed in these two posts are significantly different, the tone is
similar, in that both cases allude to a high degree of familiarity among members. In addition,
they also illuminate Milk’s involvement as site owner to be quite high, actively participating as a
member of the community rather than merely functioning as an administrator of the website.
Furthermore, this collection of posts also illustrates the use of the general forum as a
communal space for communication, in many ways extending the practices of tape-trading
111

Figure 3.11
138

sessions into the virtual world. For example, in “I NEED A HOOK UP” ending on August 18,
morph asks if community members have any hip hop films on DVD they are willing to share. In
addition, he also indicates that he is still waiting to receive an item in the post from Rugged Man,
who subsequently responds that he is himself still waiting for it to arrive in the mail from a third
party. Through this exchange it is evident that AG functioned as a tool to augment rather than
replace earlier tape-trading practices, allowing for faster and perhaps more reliable
communication, yet not fully supplanting interactions in the real world.
Significantly, Figure 3.11 also reveals an emphasis on American hip hop in the AG
community during this early period. It should be noted that the thread “who is ya favorite south

138
“General Forum,” AfricasGateway.com, Accessed April 23, 2015,
http://www.africasgateway.com/forums/index.php/board,12.0.html
112
african rap artist or group?” demonstrates the presence of and interest in local South African hip
hop at the time. However, “Methodman album (tical 0)” and “Race relations Part III : briCK
Goes to Ja rule in DBN” were far more typical of the hip hop news and topics discussed during
this period. In addition, these three posts also underscore the significant differences between the
visibility and accessibility of South African versus American musicians, as the former tended to
be linked with questions like “does he have new stuff recorded?”
139
and “somebody better get J
Bux a [hip hop] job,”
140
whereas the latter focused on the release of commercial albums and
major concert performances.
Two years later, in 2005, the AG community had continued to develop and transform. As
the peak year of activity in both the formal and user-generated sections of the website (Figure
3.12), several noticeable changes had begun to take place. Not only were many of the active
members from 2003 still visible, but they had also been joined by many new and energetic
voices. Although these additions significantly expanded the size of the AG community, the
conversations and interactions occurring in the general forum space continued to remain quite
personal. For example, members continued to wish each other happy birthday and happy New
Year, and continued to post RIP notifications for fellow members who passed away. At the same
time, many conversations also revealed a growth in local activity, suggesting a rise in the
production and availability of local South African hip hop. Thus, while the thirst for connection
was still the primary focus of the forums section during this period, the interest in and use of the
space as a tool for visibility had noticeably increased.

139
fahfee, Reply #6, “who is ya favorite south african rap artist or group?” (August 9, 2003 02:26:00 AM), Accessed
August 7, 2015, http://www.africasgateway.com/forums/index.php/topic,903.0.html
140
RuSh, Reply #7, “who is ya favorite south african rap artist or group?” (August 9, 200307:13:00 PM), August 7,
2015, http://www.africasgateway.com/forums/index.php/topic,903.0.html
113

Figure 3.12
141

Figure 3.12 illustrates several aspects of this transformation. As noted above, AG
members from 2003 like RuSh and briCK continued to appear in the message boards, and were
joined by several new names like Dpleezy, MaddStone, mulmens and Tek. Rather than changing
the culture of this forum, these new members adopted the already established cultural practices
of existing members, mainly utilizing the general discussion section to cultivate and maintain
personal relationships with each other. For example, much like in 2003, several threads in 2005
including “@Born,” “@Tate” and “ATT: SYN,” were addressed to specific AG members as a
public means of communicating with one another. Similarly, in 2005 many new members also
gave a general greeting upon joining the community, which usually received a warm response

141
“General Forum,” AfricasGateway.com, Accessed April 23, 2015,
http://www.africasgateway.com/forums/index.php/board,12.0.html
114
from multiple existing community members (for example, please see Tek’s post “MAY I
INTRODUCE MYSELF,” ended on July 23). In addition, the high number of responses garnered
by the death notification of AG members like “RIP ‘ill Ego Alien’ attn AG masses” ended on
July 19, further support the strong sense of community cultivated through the message boards.
In addition to cultivating community, in 2005 the general discussion forum also
continued to function as an extension of earlier tape-trading practices. For example, on July 24
RuSh created a thread titled “dreams that turns out to be a nightmare,” which included a link that
users could click to download the referenced song’s file. Similarly, on July 21 Ethix shared a
video link in the conversation thread “Madlib video,” which was viewed 442 times and garnered
a response by Token412 thanking Ethix for the share. Significantly, this file sharing also did, at
times, translate into some members posting links or files to their own materials, such as in Tek’s
introduction; however, this practice of self-promotion remained relatively rare at the time.
Perhaps the most noticeable shift between 2003 and 2005 was the rise in visibility of
local South African hip hop. Several threads shown in the screenshot above in Figure 3.12
strongly underscore the growth and development of this culture. For example, in “Pro-Kid Heads
Or Tails” several members discuss the high quality of the music video produced in association
with Pro Kid’s Heads and Tails (2005) album release. This high-quality video is significant
because it signifies both the development of the music industry in South Africa, and its embrace
of local hip hop culture. Similarly, the “wackest SA album covers” thread started by RuSh also
alludes to the industry’s embrace of hip hop in a backhanded manner, given that most album
covers discussed (and critiqued) were professionally designed and produced in conjunction with
South African projects. Most significantly, this institutional embrace of hip hop is also evident in
the “Black Mist/ Writers Block on SABC’s Street Journal” thread, because in it Dpleezy (a.k.a.
115
Dplanet a.k.a. Black Mist) describes an interview he recently completed for the show, which
gives visibility to South African hip hop through a national government media outlet (South
Africa Broadcasting Company). Although these conversations surrounding South African hip
hop culture do not replace the interest in other national scenes (MaddStone, for example, still
discusses Mos Def’s album New Danger (2005) in “Mos Def – New Danger….CNA”), they do
clearly indicate a growth in the visibility of and interest in hip hop from the larger South African
community.
By 2008, which was the most active year for new posts in the AG general discussion
section, many of the changes that were percolating in 2005 had become far more pronounced.
The AG community had grown even larger by this time; however, visible fractures had also
begun to develop. Whereas previously the community had been a relatively cohesive group with
a shared identity and common values, by 2008 this closeness had noticeably unraveled.
Significantly, this shift coincided with a rise in the frequency of self-promotion occurring within
the space, so that the emphasis in the forum had drifted even further away from connection
toward visibility. Although many members continued to frequent AG to make and maintain
connections, generally this sense of community had grown somewhat secondary to the pursuit of
being seen and heard on the website.
The screenshot below, showing a collection of posts in the AG general forum during July
2008, is evidence of this trend (see Figure 3.13). First, once again, many new names appear in
the space, such as Mad, A pimp named Sarkozy, Bondizzo, GHOSTRIDER, and modoe. At the
same time, older members like Omero’s Daddy and Lord Deacon of Frost also remained active.
However, the sense of community and connection that was so evident in the 2003 forums had
visibly dissipated. For example, the thread titled “You are a faggot” ending on July 24 is a
116
hostile post by The Angry Hand of God directed at “the person who mailed my post from the
‘Cocksuckers’ thread to my mother.”
142
This exchange not only reveals the highly homophobic
and misogynistic culture that had sadly always featured within this space, but it also illuminates
the type of negative behavior and antagonistic interactions that many members had begun to
exhibit toward each other. Whereas previously AG had functioned as a welcoming and
supportive space for marginalized hip hop heads across the country, through this post it is made
clear that this communal affinity and close, tight-knit culture in the AG forums had eroded
significantly.

Figure 3.13
143

142
The Angry Hand of God, “You are a faggot,” (July 22, 2008 10:53:28 AM), Accessed August 10, 2015,
http://www.africasgateway.com/forums/index.php/topic,23537.0.html
143
“General Forum,” AfricasGateway.com, Accessed April 23, 2015,
http://www.africasgateway.com/forums/index.php/board,12.0.html
117
The clearest illustration of this shift is the conflict that developed surrounding one of
these new AG members, Mad. Mad (a.k.a. Madd Rapper), who identified himself as a male from
Queenstown, South Africa, registered with AG on July 22, 2008. That day, in his very first post,
which was titled “FUCK CRACKBOYS!”, Mad publicly criticized the South African rap group
Crackboys, which another AG member named Cash belonged to. Over the next several months
Mad continued to antagonize several AG members including Cash, and many individuals within
the community began to call for the moderators to ban him from the forums. However, instead of
functioning as an act of solidarity against an outsider terrorizing the community,
144
these calls
more accurately reflected the promotion of personal rather than collective interests, and exhibited
a continuation of the hostility that had begun to manifest within the forum space. Prior to Mad’s
emergence, for example, many of these same members had been similarly critical of and hostile
toward Cash, who himself also frequently presented himself in an aggressive and antagonistic
manner.
Part of the hostility directed toward Cash in the general forum was due to the way in
which he chose to engage the online space. Although AG members continued to use the site as a
tool for circulating music, many, including Cash, had begun to approach the message boards
more strategically as a means of circulating or promoting music that they themselves had a hand
in creating. In doing so, this practice transformed the tape-trading culture that had previously
been prominent on AG, which grew to function more as a virtual bulletin board where one would
post items of self-promotion. For example, in the “Crackboys Gateway” thread started by
Bondizzo on July 23, several members noted the overabundance of recent topics featuring the

144
For example, please see the thread titled “Y’all waaaaaack” posted in 2003. Anonymous, “Y’all
wackkkkkkkkkkk!,” (March 25, 2003 07:18:00 PM), Accessed August 27, 2017,
http://www.africasgateway.com/forums/index.php/topic,263.0.html
118
group, and one respondent suggested that even this discussion itself was also a tool for acquiring
visibility: “And your remedy for this ‘complaint’ is starting another [thread]? Seems like you
guys like the attention? Don’t be shy it makes good business sense.”
145

In addition to underscoring these specific transformations, this screenshot in Figure 3.13
also illuminates the further institutionalization of African hip hop, which had become far more
mainstream in South African popular culture than it had been previously. Particularly, the
“Africa’s Premier Emcee Competition in South Africa” thread from July 25 signifies a major
shift in the appropriation of hip hop by various African communities, given that ten years prior it
was still considered a marginal subculture perceived as primarily American, rather than African.
In contrast, by 2008 hip hop had become a very visible music and aesthetic in mainstream
African popular culture, and was embraced rather than rejected by most society.
By 2010 the consequences of the changes set in motion during the previous decade began
to surface. Rather than growing, the AG community had shrunk noticeably, with few regular
members from previous years continuing to frequent the online space. Thus, the loss of
connection that had begun to surface in 2008 was significantly more complete, and the use of
AG as a tool for visibility had become even more brazen and pervasive. In addition, many
members also began to articulate a growing anxiety surrounding the death of AG, frequently
lamenting the overall state of health of the website.
A screenshot of the AG general forum in January 2010 shown above (see Figure 3.14)
once again helps to animate these transformations. One of the first characteristics made apparent
through this image is the significant lack of focused discussion centered on hip hop. Whereas AG
had initially served as a rich space for the exchange of ideas and information about various local

145
Omero’s Daddy, Reply #2, “Crackboys Gateway,” (July 23, 2008 05:22:00 PM), Accessed August 10, 2015,
http://www.africasgateway.com/forums/index.php/topic,23558.0.html
119

Figure 3.14
146

scenes, by 2010 a cluttered disarray of voices and topics having little or nothing to do with the
subject of hip hop had diluted this function. For example, out of the nine threads shown above
only three make any mention whatsoever of hip hop music or culture, and of these three, only
one demonstrates any real degree of substantial or thoughtful discussion. Significantly, although
the “Happy Birthday RR” post ending on July 4 suggests the ongoing use of the space by some
users to maintain community connections, this practice was mainly enacted by older AG
members, and rarely even garnered the acknowledgement of newer community members.
Instead, AG continued to morph into a tool for visibility. Although this transformation
was not in itself new, the appearance of spam in the message boards such as is seen in the
“Проверить за,” “Тайны науки к” and “Опубликуйте” threads, indicates the further

146
“General Forum,” AfricasGateway.com, Accessed April 23, 2015,
http://www.africasgateway.com/forums/index.php/board,12.0.html
120

Figure 3.15
147

development of this trend within the online space. Furthermore, the number of times a new
thread was viewed also began to increase in comparison to the number of times it garnered a
response (see Figure 3.15). Therefore, this change also indicated a loss of interest among AG
users in cultivating community, as most were reading others’ posts and creating their own, but
were increasingly less inclined to respond to or interact directly with each other. Consequently,
the culture within the general forum became noticeably less communal, further underscoring this
shift away from communication toward visibility.
Furthermore, community members also began to express anxiety about the website itself,
frequently commenting on the lack of activity and fretting over the likelihood of its complete
disappearance from the online world. In addition to the thread titled “WHAT IS THE DEAL
WITH THIS SITE???????????????”, which very clearly articulates the general concern of AG
users at this time, the increased frequency that individuals began to archive the website using the
Internet Archive’s “Wayback Machine” starting in 2008 also underscores the issue.
Significantly, by 2010 even this practice had tapered off dramatically, suggesting a fatal drop in
connection to and engagement with AG (see Figure 3.16).

147
Ibid.
0
500
1000
1500
2003 2005 2008 2010 2013
Views per Response
121

Figure 3.16
148

Sadly, by 2013, these challenges had spiraled even further out of control. The death of
AG so widely feared in 2010 had become an unfortunate reality, as even the general forum was
largely lifeless and had grown even more cluttered with self-promotion. Not surprisingly then, by
2013 there was almost no connection whatsoever among AG users, and visibility had become the
primary if not the sole function of the space.

Figure 3.17
149

148
Screenshot of image found on AG’s page on the Wayback Machine showing archiving activity of the website
between 1996 and 2015. “www.AfricasGateway.com,” Wayback Machine, Accessed August 11, 2015,
http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.africasgateway.com
149
“General Forum,” AfricasGateway.com, Accessed April 23, 2015,
http://www.africasgateway.com/forums/index.php/board,12.0.html
122
Figure 3.17 shows clear evidence of these changes. Firstly, although it would have been
impossible in previous years, this screenshot contains the entirety of general forum posts ending
in 2013, which amounted to an abysmal total of fifteen. This meager sum reflects a strong lack of
interest in the AG forum space, and is indicative of a larger disinterest in the website more
generally. Significantly, this lack of energy surrounding AG also extended to the owner Milk.
Whereas in 2003 Milk was very active in the forums and was a well-known figure within the
early community, by 2013 he was relatively unknown to most active members. This lack of
knowledge is clearly illustrated in the “Who owns Africasgateway?” thread seen above, in which
several newer members demonstrate their lack of knowledge surrounding Milk’s identity and
current involvement, which stands in sharp contrast to the more seasoned members who joined
the site when he was still an actively engaged member. Finally, Figure 3.17 also reveals an
overwhelming amount of self-promotion taking place within the forum, with seven out of the
fourteen threads that year engaged in the activity. For example, through this screenshot one
learns that Black Noise had a new track out, users were asked to vote for Zone Fam on an awards
show, Vexer had a new album out and an interview posted on another website, and Digital
Dynasty 23 had also just recently dropped an album. Significantly, none of these advertisements
garnered much of a response from others within the community, which again underscores the
lack of connection present between members.
Ultimately, there were three major factors that contributed to AG’s decline. First, the
introduction of social media significantly altered the virtual landscape. As noted earlier,
Myspace, for example, was launched in January 2004, and became particularly significant as a
tool for musicians to promote themselves and their music. In 2005, YouTube launched and
quickly became popular as a means for sharing music videos. The following year Facebook and
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Twitter also entered the social networking scene, and SoundCloud joined them a year later in
2007. Collectively, these introductions did two distinct things. First, each of these platforms
provided an alternative space for geographically disparate hip hop heads to share music, discuss
the culture, and interact with one another. Whereas initially, AG was the only space where
individuals in southern Africa could go and connect with each other, by 2008, which was the
final year of major activity on AG, users had several other options to choose from. Afropolitans
particularly, who had been at the core of the AG community throughout its formation and early
development, were often among the first to flee to these new online spaces, which was once
again due to their better access to such tools gained by economic and social privilege. Thus, the
conversations that had been occurring in the forum began to dissipate, which is evident in the
sharp drop in user activity there beginning in 2009.
In addition, this shift toward social media also changed the nature of the conversations
and interactions occurring among hip hop heads because social networking sites are not quite
public spaces to the same degree. Whereas anyone can post a comment in the AG forums that
can then be read by anyone else who chooses to visit, interactions occurring through social media
typically take place between individuals who already know each other. For example, it was only
after meeting Rugged Man while conducting this research in South Africa that he and I
connected on Facebook; however, it was only because I posted a survey solicitation in the AG
general forum that the two of us met each other in the first place. Thus, the shift away from this
type of public space affects the way online communities develop and grow, making them a far
more exclusive type of space and altering the nature of their conversations.
The second factor contributing to the decline of AG was the decline in Milk’s
involvement and participation. As discussed above, in 2003 Milk was a very active participant on
124
the site, and hence he was a well-known figure to many in the AG forums community. By 2013,
however, due to several personal factors, Milk’s participation in the site had dropped
significantly. Thus, the once familiar figure had become almost completely unknown to most
within the community, which is most evident in the “Who owns Africasgateway?” thread started
by King Ming discussed above. In conjunction with this decline in participation in the forums,
the formal content of the website such as news articles and information also began to fade. For
example, as is illustrated in Figure 3.18 below, the formal content posted after 2005 falls
dramatically, and no new posts are made at all in 2009, 2012 or after 2013. Consequently,
uncertainty surrounding the future of AG is in many ways left to fester and grow, ultimately
adding a negative effect to the health of the site overall.

Figure 3.18
150

Finally, the most important element contributing to the demise of AG is the loss of
connection described above. Initially the marginality of hip hop in South Africa functioned as a
“push” factor encouraging hip hop heads to go online in search of each other. However, over
time hip hop became less marginal and more mainstream, which is evident in its
institutionalization and acceptance as an expression of African identity. Although this trend is in

150
“Monthly Archives,” AfricasGateway.com, Accessed 8/27/2015, http://www.africasgateway.com/archives/
0
100
200
300
400
500
Formal Content
125
many ways what heads on AG had been working for (i.e. greater visibility and more
participation), it also had the added effect of reducing the sense of social alienation experienced
by hip hoppers, which ultimately decreased the need for a strong sense of community that had
initially driven them to AG in the first place. Therefore, the institutionalization of hip hop in
South Africa also had a noticeable effect on the decline of the AG website, which is a fact easily
traceable in the narrative above.
Conclusions on Digitization
Throughout this chapter I have attempted to illustrate the development of digital
technology in South Africa to argue that this process has resulted in a more diverse, visible and
more abstract representation of African identity. To make this argument I have focused
specifically on the introduction of the Internet to South Africa in the early 1990s and followed
the effects of this new media technology on the production, distribution and consumption of
music in the recording industry up through to present day. To clarify this connection, I have paid
special attention to the development of hip hop music and culture in South Africa, revealing its
localization in conjunction with its institutionalization and growing popularity as a mainstream
South Africa genre. Ultimately, I have engaged this history to illuminate the role digital
technologies have played in opening the field of representation, allowing a broader range of
people to participate in the process of cultural production. Consequently, I maintain that the
process of digitization has expanded and continues to expand understandings of contemporary
African identity, which has, as a direct consequence of this history, become increasingly diverse
over time.
The process of digitization in South Africa has been largely driven by the accessibility of
the Internet. Initially, this accessibility was highly restricted due to both a lack of infrastructure
126
as well as the protectionist stance of the South African government enacted through its restrictive
ICT policies. These economic limitations, combined with the specialized skills and tools
necessary to get online, made the early South African Internet a highly elite space, which meant
that most early users tended to share as well as represent similar backgrounds, experiences and
worldviews. However, over time several significant changes occurred in South Africa’s digital
landscape, starting with the relaxing of these policies and the development of infrastructure,
which helped to reduce Internet access costs, making it possible for more potential Internet users
to get online. Additionally, the emergence of social networking websites helped to further
encourage new interest in the Internet, while the introduction of sub-$100 Smartphones in the
last few years has finally put this aspiration more within reach of everyday people. Hence,
Internet penetration rates in South Africa have recently reached the 50% mark, and through this
increase the nature of the individuals online and the representations found in the space has
transformed significantly. Whereas previously a unified and somewhat narrow voice was given
space online, the Internet in South Africa is now finally home to a wide array of individuals from
different backgrounds, with different perspectives, and different understandings of what it means
to be African.
This increased access to digital technologies is especially significant because they have
been instrumental in broadening access to the tools of representation. To underscore the
significance of this transformation I have focused on the production, distribution and
consumption of music, which have been some of the practices most visibly altered by
developments in digital technology. First and foremost, this transformation is embodied in the
shift to digital music in the form of mp3 files, which were popularized most notably through the
emergence of Napster in 1999. Particularly in places like South Africa where formal flows of
127
cultural production were highly limited, this development was monumental because it granted
more agency to consumers (and later producers), which altered distribution and consumption
patterns. Similarly, other developments in digitization, particularly the ability to record, mix and
master original music files from a personal computer at minimal cost, have also made it easier
for the independent production of music. Therefore, this study argues that the process of
digitization continues to transform cultural production in places like the music industry by
expanding access to the tools of representation.
Hip hop in South Africa offers a clear illustration of this transformation. Since its
introduction in the 1980s, hip hop culture has continued to grow and evolve in the country. In
this first decade hip hop was a relatively marginalized cultural practice that was embraced by a
small and somewhat elite group of teenagers and young adults, mostly who belonged to the
“Coloured” community. Consequently, when production of local hip hop music began to occur
in the 1990s, these were the first voices and experiences most clearly represented. However, as
the 1990s progressed and hip hop began to gain visibility and popularity in the country,
individuals with other cultural identities, experiences and backgrounds began to participate in the
production of hip hop music as well. As noted above, this increased diversity in the production of
South African hip hop music was significantly aided by the digital developments occurring
within the music industry, which made the necessary tools more accessible to a broader range of
people. Therefore, representation within South African hip hop music expanded over the 2000s
and 2010s, most visibly through the incorporation of vernac hip hop, which has grown
increasingly popular in recent years.
These developments are also highly evident on AG, which was one of South Africa’s first
hip hop websites. In addition to revealing the transformation of hip hop taking place in the
128
country, the culture and community surrounding the site’s general forum further underscore
these changes. Whereas initially this forum starts out as a relatively small and tight-knit
communal space, by the end of the 2000s the camaraderie and sense of unity once present in the
space had transformed into a disorganized and often antagonistic array of different voices and
fragmented identities. Ultimately, this shift was largely responsible for the demise of the site, as
has been outlined in detail above.
129
Chapter 4
Africa is the New Black: Commercializing African Identity in the Twenty-First
Century

Figure 4.1
151

A few years ago, a young independent fashion designer named Ron Bass had an idea for
a jersey. As he explained to fashion blogger Kiah McBride of XONecole online magazine, he
wanted to make a garment for everyday people that celebrated his African cultural roots. To do
this, Bass decided to design a top in the spirit of a sports jersey, using a colorful dashiki and
screen-printing “Africa” across the chest, placing the number fifty-four below it to represent the
number of countries on the continent.
152
A few months later, a small handful of Black American
celebrities began to appear in the media wearing Bass’s top, including fashion stylist June
Ambrose and iconic female popstar Beyoncé. Particularly following the emergence of images on
the Internet showing Beyoncé in the jersey (Figure 4.1), interest in Bass’s design skyrocketed—
everyone, it seemed, wanted to know how and where they could purchase one for themselves.
153

151
Image accessed through Kiah McBride, “Designer Ron Bass Talks Cultural INSPIRATION Behind the Dashiki,”
xonecole.com (September 2, 2015), Accessed October 11, 2016, http://xonecole.com/designer-ron-bass-talks-
cultural-inspiration-behind-the-dashiki/
152
In his interview with McBride, Bass noted that not everyone agrees with this number, stating that, “[s]ome people
say it’s 56 countries, or whatever,” but he argues that he chose 54 because it “represents the continent in its
entirety.” Ibid.
153
For example, the image of Beyoncé wearing the jersey was also found on a website called “Where To Get,”
which features popular fashion items and provides users with multiple links to external websites where the items can
130
Unfortunately, by the time the general public became aware of Bass’s jersey, he had
already sold out of all the prints he made and had decided to discontinue its production.
However, the attention his garment garnered sparked the interest of mainstream fashion retailer
Forever 21, which subsequently approached Bass to create a line for the store that incorporated
his much sought-after design. Bass agreed, and his line was launched in Forever 21 stores just
before Christmas in 2014. Significantly, although much of his original Africa 54 design
remained intact, to appeal to the broader consumer base of Forever 21, which mainly included
non-African descended people, Bass opted to replace his original text with his last name and the
year he was born (Figure 4.2).

Figure 4.2
154

As is the nature of the culture industry, the interest sparked by Bass’s original jersey
design also garnered the attention of others in the fashion world eager to capitalize on the
excitement surrounding it. One such designer was Los Angeles-based Kevin Afuwah, who
premiered a dashiki a lot like Bass’s design at a viewing event for his new Afrocentric clothing
line Royal Kulture a month later in January of 2015. Shortly thereafter, fashion icon Sarah

be purchased. “Shirt: Beyonce, beyonce fashion, african print, red top, africa, round sunglasses, denim shorts, long
sleeves, dress, beyonce dress,” Where To Get (No Date), Accessed August 10, 2016,
http://wheretoget.it/look/246813
154
“Ron Bass,” Forever 21 (No Date), Accessed August 10, 2016,
http://www.forever21.com/Product/Category.aspx?category=promo-ron-bass
131
Jessica Parker was spotted wearing Afuwah’s design, which features the text “Royal 1” in place
of Bass’s “Africa 54” as seen in Figure 4.3 below. Significantly, Parker’s embrace of Afuwah’s
jersey launched the dashiki further into the mainstream, where numerous other iterations also
appeared over the course of the year. In response to this trend and citing Parker specifically, Elle
Canada concluded in an article (briefly) posted to Twitter in August of 2015, that the dashiki
was the “newest it-item” in fashion.
155
Not surprisingly, both this statement and Parker’s donning
of the garment were met with considerable criticism, particularly from Black Americans who
labeled the magazine’s claim and Parker’s fashion choice as but two of the most recent
illustrations of White appropriation of Black culture.

Figure 4.3
156

This story of Bass’s dashiki is instructive for several reasons. First, it clearly illustrates
how an element of culture like a dashiki becomes cool in society. As Malcolm Gladwell explains
in his essay “The Coolhunt,” the recognition of cool is like a new idea that spreads from one
person to another until it saturates society. Drawing on diffusion research, Gladwell describes
how the idea that something is cool is first taken up by a small group of “innovators,” which is

155
Madelyn Chung, “Elle Canada Faces Twitter Backlash For Calling Dashiki ‘The Newest It-Item,’” The
Huffington Post Canada (August 20, 2015), Accessed October 11, 2016,
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/08/20/elle-canada-dashiki_n_8016342.html
156
Image accessed through Kiah McBride, “Ron Bass Talks.”
132
then embraced by the “early adaptors” who are more visible within society. Subsequently, this
visibility helps persuade those of the “early majority” to embrace the new idea of cool as well,
and they are then followed by the “late majority,” whom Gladwell describes as “the deliberate
and the skeptical masses.”
157
Finally, the most conservative group known as the “laggards” also
adopt the trending idea of cool, which by that time has long since been abandoned by the
innovators in favor of the next new notion of cool.
In the case of the Africa 54 jersey, Bass’s innovation in cool was his use of the dashiki,
which then led early adaptors like Beyoncé and June Ambrose to embrace the garment as well.
Because of their celebrity status, these early adaptors helped increase the visibility of the dashiki,
which subsequently inspired the early and then the late masses to also perceive its coolness. This
recognition ultimately resulted in the increased production and purchase of dashikis from places
like Forever 21, as well as the emergence of many other options, which arose to capitalize on the
cresting fashion trend. Following the controversy surrounding Elle Canada that came later that
same year, the energy surrounding the dashiki took a noticeable decline, and has since been
supplanted by other, newer fashion ideas. Significantly, as is the practice of innovators, Bass’s
discontinuation of his original line prior to his collaboration with Forever 21 indicates his move
to newer iterations of cool long before the dashiki had run its full course through society.
Additionally, Bass’s shifting notion of cool is also evinced in the current garments for sale in his
collections showcased on both of his fashion websites, neither of which offer anything like the
dashiki that brought him to fame.
158

157
Malcolm Gladwell, “The Coolhunt,” The New Yorker, March 17, 1997.
158
Please see “Official Bass By Ron Bass clothing web shop. Can You Feel It?,” Bass By Ron Bass (2016),
Accessed October 12, 2016, http://store.bass84.com; and “I am Ron Bass,” I am Ron Bass (2016), Accessed October
12, 2016, http://iamronbass.com
133
In addition to animating cool’s general trajectory, Bass’s dashiki also reveals the specific
appetite for African cultural products that exists within the global culture industry. This appetite
is driven by the industry’s pursuit of what I refer to as “African cool,” which is essentially a
consumer’s presumption of cool bestowed on a product simply because of its association with
Africa. This presumption is quite similar to that of Asian Kool, which was noted in the 1990s in
connection with the appropriation of South Asian aesthetics in the UK’s mainstream music
scene. Significantly, Asian Kool was critiqued by cultural studies scholars like Virinder S. Karla
and John Hutnyk, who argued that although the appropriation of certain South Asian cultural
elements like the sitar or the bindi may have “contributed to a progressive visibility of
‘Asianness’ and Asians in Britain,”
159
visibility alone was not enough to affect a meaningful
transformation in the cultural politics or perceptions of society. Similarly, while African cool has
also led to improvements in the global visibility of Africans, as will be detailed below,
particularly among those not belonging to the African diasporic world and especially those
residing in the West, this presumption of coolness continues to fetishize African culture based on
an exotic otherness that coincides rather than conflicts with mainstream perceptions of the
continent.
Not surprisingly, African cool has cycled through the culture industry multiple times over
its lifespan. Ethnomusicologist Karin Patterson notes that, in the United States “Africa became
cool when [B]lack became cool,”
160
which began to take shape in the late 1960s after the passage
of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the subsequent rise of “Black is Beautiful.” Significantly, the
dashiki also became a popular garment in the United States during this period, first appearing in

159
Virinder S. Karla and John Hutnyk, “Brimful of agitation, authenticity and appropriation: Madonna’s ‘Asian
Kool,’ Postcolonial Studies, vol. 1, no. 3 (1998), 340.
160
Karin Gaynell Patterson, “Expressions of Africa in Los Angeles Public Performance, 1781-1994,” PhD diss.,
University of California-Los Angeles (2007), 233.
134
the Black community and gaining visibility through activists like Huey P. Newton and Stokely
Carmichael, before being adapted by White American hippies from the counterculture
movement, which increased its popularity and visibility, yet also diluted its political
connotations. Consequently, by the time the advertisement shown below in Figure 4.4 appeared
in Ebony magazine in 1971, much of the original energy surrounding the dashiki had dissipated
in the United States, reducing it to little more than “a great new style” that held the promise to be
“the most colorful garment you ever wore.”

Figure 4.4
161

The second wave of African cool arose during what Patterson describes as the “Golden
Age” of African popular music, which took place from roughly 1980 until 1994 in the United
States. During this period, Western interests in African popular music expanded significantly,
resulting in an increase in both the production of records by African musicians (and their live
performances), as well as the emergence of the “world music” genre.
162
Radio programs like

161
Image from Ebony in 1971, vol. 26, no. 9, accessed via Classic Film, “1971 Men’s Fashion Ad, African Dashiki
by Eleganza,” Flickr (January 19, 2014), Accessed July 31, 2016,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/29069717@N02/12023633856/in/photostream/
162
This term was invented in the late 1980s with the idea of improving record sales for musics that had previously
been difficult to categorize and market. Ironically, as Timothy Brennan notes, “[w]hat is world music—in the sense
135
KCRW’s African Beat in Los Angeles also became popular during this period, and the dashiki
once again made its appearance, such as is seen on African Beat radio host CC Smith in Figure
4.5 below. Significantly, this wave of African cool was also aided by the visibility of the South
African acapella group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, which was attained through their
collaboration with Paul Simon on his Graceland album released in 1986. However, much like
Elle Canada and Sarah Jessica Parker, Simon’s engagement with Ladysmith was also criticized
as exploitive, as some argued that his commercial success took unfair advantage of an oppressed
people and culture.

Figure 4.5
163

During this same period, African cool also surfaced in association with political hip hop,
which resulted in several themes such as Afrocentrism and cultural nationalism appearing in the
genre’s content and aesthetics. Much as took place in the late 1960s, many Black American hip
hop artists began to engage with African culture through fashion during this period, frequently
utilizing Egyptian symbolism, African-style dress (most notably the dashiki), and the prominent

of being globally disseminated and popularly, even reverently, internalized almost everywhere—is precisely what is
not ‘world music’” (Brennan, 48), that is, “local or regional music that either does not travel well, or has no
ambition to travel” (Brennan, 47). However, in spite of this paradox the development of the category significantly
helped to further the consumption of non-Western musics in the United States and Europe, which Brennan partially
attributes to “a longing in metropolitan centers of Europe and North America for what is not Europe or North
America” (Brennan, 45). Timothy Brennan, “World Music Does Not Exist,” Discourse, vol. 23, no. 1, IMPERIAL
DISCOURSES: Part II (Winter 2001), 45-8.
163
Image courtesy of CC Smith, private collection.
136
repetition of the Pan-African flag colors red, green and black. Once again, however, these
aesthetic practices were coopted over time by the mainstream culture industry and transformed
into an apolitical product more easily marketable to a “universal” (read White) audience.
Consequently, direct visual references to African culture were replaced with a more general
engagement of African aesthetics, which included visual markers like repetitive patterns, bright
colors, symmetry, and intricate designs. Therefore, the colorful African prints found in such
items as the dashiki were transformed over time into more universal “urban” styles that engaged
these ideas in abstract ways, largely through bright colors and repetitive geometric patterns such
as those seen in Figure 4.6 below. Eventually, these colors and patterns were further abstracted
(Figure 4.7), before the cycle of African cool quietly subsided once again.

Figure 4.6
164
Figure 4.7
165

This most recent wave of African cool, which Bass’s dashiki is a part of, began to surface
in the global culture industry around 2010 when the youth culture boom taking place on the
continent first began to attract international attention. Due in large part to the effects of Africa

164
Gregory Babcock, “How to Wear Overalls: A Helpful Guide,” Complex (January 22, 2016), Accessed August 10,
2016, http://uk.complex.com/style/2016/01/how-to-wear-overalls-men/
165
Image from a men’s clothing catalogue called International Male in the 1990s, accessed via “90’s fashion,”
Pinterest (No Date), Accessed August 10, 2016, https://www.pinterest.com/jerrygrodrigues/90s-fashion/
137
Rising,
166
this boom has since produced an influx of African-made cultural products onto the
global market, which has generated more cultural production in peripheral African economies,
repositioned some African economies (such as South Africa) closer to the industrial core, and
attracted a growing number of Afropolitans and other African business professionals to
participate in the cultural production processes from nearer to or within the core.
Additionally, this boom has also increased the opportunities for the appropriation of
African cultural products by others from within the industry. Although, as noted above, African
cool began to emerge in the late 1960s, the extent to which the culture industry is now globally
integrated has resulted in its more frequent and consistent access to other cultures including—
and particularly—African. This access, combined with the increased production of cultural
products by Africans globally, has led the industry, which is always in search of the next “it”
item, to increasingly turn toward and appropriate from this new resource in an effort to satisfy
the public’s insatiable thirst for new products.
Lastly, in association with the culture industry’s pursuit of African cool, Bass’s dashiki
also illuminates how, over the course of a product’s journey through the industry, the unique
context out of which it originates is stripped away in favor of mass appeal and corporate profits.
As Bass explained about the transformation of his original jersey design when it premiered in
Forever 21 stores:
I didn’t want some people not to get the dashiki because it had Africa written on it. When
I first initially did it in my mind it was for our people[,] for [Black Americans], and then
the next time it was more so to let the print speak for itself and get anybody and
everybody wearing the print that our culture was known for.
167

166
Most notably, the increased circulation of African people and cultures resulting from the globalization processes
detailed in Chapter 2, and the improved access African people and cultures have gained to the global market (and
vice-versa) through the digitization processes discussed in Chapter 3.
167
McBride, “Ron Bass Talks.”
138
Of course, part of the incentive to get “anybody and everybody” wearing the garment was that
they would each be paying for the privilege to do so, which meant that both Bass and Forever 21
had a vested interest in making the dashiki appeal to as wide an audience as possible. To
accomplish this, Bass stripped away the garment’s most overt connections to Africa, leaving the
print alone to conjure the African cool necessary to attract paying customers, while at the same
time allowing the relationship to remain abstract so as not to alienate any potential buyers.
168

This abstraction, which occurs as a product moves through the cycle of cool and as it gets
closer to the global culture industry’s core, is the underlying reason why, as Karla and Hutnyk
argue, the visibility generated through such cultural appropriations is not itself enough to
transform social norms or mainstream attitudes surrounding minority groups. Additionally, as
they explain,
The key problem…is that there is more than one context, more than one public, more
than one interpretation and more than one struggle. The contradiction that is to be kept in
mind is that the progressive sounds in one space may become the agents of
imperialism…in another.
169

More specifically, as a cultural product moves through the industry, it is inevitably taken from
what is labeled in world-systems analysis as the “periphery” toward the “core,” which, in the
case of the global culture industry, is located in the United States, particularly in the major
commercial centers of New York City and Los Angeles. As these products approach the core
they are transformed to accommodate the expectations of the core’s consumers, which typically
requires that their contexts are deemphasized or rewritten in order to more easily fit them into the

168
Significantly, this decision (whether Bass’s or the corporate executives’ at Forever 21) was only one of the most
recent acts of contextual erasure that the dashiki has undergone on its journey through the culture industry. Initially,
the dashiki was exclusive to West Africa, before the late 1960s when the garment was, as noted above, appropriated
by Black Americans and then again by the White hippy counterculture movement. Similar to the sanitation that
occurred during the transformation of Bass’s design for Forever 21, as seen above in the 1971 advertisement found
in Ebony magazine, by the time this earlier dashiki cycle had been filtered through the culture industry, most of its
original connotations had been washed away too.
169
Karla and Hutnyk, “Brimful of agitation,” 347.
139
dominant narratives of mainstream society. Consequently, although the market in the United
States offers the highest levels of global visibility for African cultural products, as is evident
through the journey of Bass’s dashiki through the marketplace, this visibility is afforded through
the product’s sanitization, thereby restricting its ability to affect meaningful change in
mainstream perceptions of Africa. In doing so, the ability of Africans to represent themselves
and challenge conventional expectations surrounding their identities, which cultural producers
may enjoy in industrial spaces on the periphery, is stifled to accommodate the pursuit of capital
as cultural production approaches the core. Significantly, this process of dilution is also parallel
to the general trajectory of the worldview of Afropolitanism itself, which was initially embraced
by a small group of African people but has since also been diluted by the global culture industry
into a cultural commodity (i.e. African cool) on its journey to the core.
To further illuminate these points about African culture and the global culture industry
the remainder of this chapter centers on the New York City-based African popular music website
Okayafrica.com (OKA). This website, which its CEO Abiola Oke describes as the “largest online
platform for New African Arts and Culture” and “the only platform truly capturing the breadth of
the continent’s unprecedented youth culture boom,”
170
holds an important position in this current
wave of African cultural production. Launched in 2010 by Ginny Suss and Vanessa Wruble,
OKA has been a key contributor to the swelling of African cool in the United States, by
representing Africa and its people to a young, hip and politically leftist Western audience. Due to
its careful branding and association with parent company Okayplayer.com (OKP), OKA serves
as an important resource for the early masses to gain information pertaining to current trends in
African popular culture circulating through the global industry. While the production team at

170
Quoted from OKA CEO Abiola Oke’s LinkedIn profile page “Abiola Oke,” LinkedIn (No Date), Accessed July
22, 2016, https://www.linkedin.com/in/abiolaoke
140
OKA makes a conscious effort to present this cultural content in a nuanced and self-reflexive
manner, the website’s location at the global industry’s core provides a different context for the
content it features, allowing a subtle repositioning of material to occur, which better coincides
with traditional Western narratives of Africa. Therefore, while this commercialization of African
culture occurring through OKA does significantly increase the visibility of African people, as is
evinced by the African identity constructed through the website, this visibility continues to be
constrained by the limitations and shifting contexts that are present near the core.
The Roots of Cool
The first step in unraveling OKA’s relationship with African cultural production is to
clarify its role in the circulation of cool within the global industry. As noted above, OKA’s
current position within this industry is heavily influenced by its association with parent company
OKP. OKP, which was launched in 1999, was born out of a vision to connect the alternative hip
hop band “The Roots” with their growing fan base. The Root’s drummer Questlove (Ahmir
Thompson), particularly, wanted to create a space where he could interact directly with Roots
fans. As he explained in an interview with Complex magazine:
I would often go to the pages of bands that we toured with and bands that I liked and the
only messages on their web sites were a weekly message to their fans. You know, I went
to the Fugees page and it wasn’t even halfway updated from The Score. The only
information I got that I didn’t know from reading magazines was Q-Tip’s spaghetti and
clam recipe on the Tribe Called Quest page.

The first time I ever saw a chat-room board, it was Michael Stipe and Courtney Love fans
having a debate about Roxy Music. I was fascinated. And I was like, “Wait a minute:
Courtney and Michael Stipe can go real time to their fanbase, but on the hip-hop side of
things, I only know that Manhattan clam chowder is the special ingredient to Q-Tip’s
spaghetti recipe?[”] I wanted to change all that.
171

171
Damien Scott and Benjamin Chesna, “The Oral History of Okayplayer,” Complex (March 8, 2013), Accessed
June 23, 2016, http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/03/the-oral-history-of-okayplayer/
141
To enact this change, Questlove teamed up with his friend Angela Nissel and The Root’s band
manager Shawn Gee, and together they developed the OKP website,
172
which launched from
Questlove’s bedroom in West Philadelphia just days after the release of the group’s fourth album
Things Fall Apart (1999).
In contrast with AHH and AG, from the very beginning the OKP website was developed
as a commercial venture and perceived by its owners as a tool with which to promote The Roots
band for financial gain. As Gee explained, “Me and Ahmir [Questlove] sat down and said we
want to build a Roots website. Back then there was no real business plan. It was more of an
advertisement for the albums and shows.”
173
Additionally, Gee also recalled that he and
Questlove aimed to create a platform that would encourage fans to revisit the website frequently,
in contrast with other band pages at the time, which failed to give fans sufficient incentive to
return at all after an initial visit.
To achieve these goals, OKP was updated almost daily with new content regarding the
most recent happenings of The Roots, which included some audio and video files as well as still
images and written coverage of the band’s tours and other daily activities. In addition, OKP also
drew in users with its sharp and witty voice (courtesy of Angela Nissel) and the frequent
presence of Questlove, who reportedly spent an average of six hours each day on the website
when it first went live.
174
Like the trends found on AHH and AG, OKP also introduced message
boards around the turn of the millennium, which significantly increased the growth of the
community surrounding it. Unlike AHH and AG, however, OKP’s boards were steadily

172
At the time, TheRoots.com was already occupied by a fan, so Questlove and band manager Shawn Gee opted
instead to use “okayplayer,” which was an accidental logo they developed and had been including on the band’s
albums since the first EP, From the Ground Up, was released in 1994.
173
Scott and Chesna, “Oral History.”
174
As Questlove explained in his interview, before the site went up he “told [Nissel] I’ll be online four hours a day.
She thought that was ridiculous. She’s like, ‘No one is on four hours a day.’ I said, ‘I’ll bet you I’ll be online four
hours a day.’ When the site first came up, I was on it six hours a day.” Ibid.
142
frequented by many alternative American hip hop celebrities including Questlove, as well as a
growing number of other “Okay Players” like Common, Talib Kweli and Jill Scott. The presence
of these celebrities significantly enhanced the visibility and reputation of the website worldwide,
and ultimately helped elevate its status to that of a “tastemaker” within the global hip hop
community.
175

Not surprisingly, the first users to begin regularly frequenting the OKP boards were self-
identified Roots fans. However, as Gee recalled, “what we started to see in that second wave [of
message board users] was that some of these people were just…expressing themselves and
communicating with other like-minded individuals.”
176
These “like-minded individuals” tended
to share similar values and views pertaining to hip hop as well as to other issues like social
justice and global politics, which influenced the culture and conversations within the OKP
community as it continued to grow. Thus, OKP became “the home of left-of-center music in
urban culture,”
177
drawing a community of hip hop heads who tended to situate themselves
outside of the mainstream, which was often critiqued as a reductive appropriation of the cultural
products and practices celebrated among this community.
Between 1999 and 2010 OKP evolved and expanded substantially. What had initially
started out as a band page for The Roots had by 2010 transformed into a cultural hub and
globally recognized tastemaker brand in the world of hip hop and urban entertainment. During
the process of this transformation OKP headquarters had been relocated from Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania to Brooklyn, New York, and the company had amassed a small staff of editors and

175
As Talib Kweli reported, “[i]n ‘99 when the site went live it was like this crazy idea. Okayplayer was the first
tatstemaker website. There was no Complex or Nahright or Pitchfork. It was like the first for us—the first prominent
tastemaker site for hip-hop.” Ibid.
176
Ibid.
177
Ibid.
143
writers who were responsible for managing the day-to-day business of the website. Significantly,
during this period the musical content covered on OKP also expanded to include not only more
artists but also a broader range of genres, reflecting the evolving music scene as well as the
changing musical tastes of the OKP community. Continuing its position as an alternative space
for music outside the mainstream (or as Questlove put it, a “soapbox for the unheard”),
178
OKP
launched four new websites beginning in 2010, which included the reggae-themed Largeup.com,
the EDM-centered okayfuture.com, the jazz-focused revive-music.com and the African popular
music-inspired OKA.
OKA, which was the first of these genre-focused okay-offshoots to launch, published its
first post on June 28, 2010. Very similar in format to OKP, this new website featured news
articles, album and artist reviews, music videos, promotions of upcoming events, coverage of
past events, a virtual store featuring Okayafrica merchandise, and a space for visitor discussion,
which was linked with the OKP message boards. Like OKP, the OKA website also established a
core group of Okayafrican artists, whose work is featured prominently and consistently
throughout the website. Significantly, many of these artists had already begun appearing in
articles and discussions on OKP prior to this launch, which suggests that some may have already
had an established relationship with the OKP brand.
179
One Okayafrican of particular note is the
well-known Afropop musician of the 1970s Fela Kuti, who, although he died in 1997, is included
in OKA’s list of artists, and whose music features prominently in discussions throughout the
website.
Significantly, within the context of Gladwell’s flow of cool, this evolution of the Okay
brand helps to situate both OKP and OKA within the global culture industry as resources for the

178
Ibid.
179
For example, Bajah + The Dry Eye Crew, whom OKA co-founder Ginny Suss managed previously.
144
early masses. This positioning is most clearly supported by the Okay brand’s close association
with celebrity Questlove, which is frequently reiterated in historical accounts of the websites
such as the one featured in Complex magazine referenced above. Much as was the effect of
Beyoncé wearing Bass’s dashiki, Questlove’s connection with the Okay-websites serves to
legitimize their authority as barometers of cool.
180
In the case of OKA, this authority is
augmented by the highly visible inclusion of both Femi and especially Fela Kuit as Okayafrican
artists, particularly as the later of whom is arguably the most iconic figure in African popular
music. Questlove’s admission to Complex magazine that he himself looks to OKA as a resource
(“I use OkayAfrica…so I can find out what interesting music is going on”
181
) further supports
this authority. Moreover, due to his highly publicized role in the creation of the brand, these
websites also function as extensions of the drummer himself, thereby implying his embrace of
whatever trends in cool are featured within them. Thus, OKA and its parent site OKP both
operate as early adaptors in the flow of cool, providing the visibility necessary to encourage the
early masses’ embrace and circulation of new trends.
Okay African Cool
One of the most prominent trends to emerge out of these websites has been the rise of
African cool itself within the global industry. As noted above, OKA was launched in mid-2010,
which was the same year that African cultural products began to once again peak the interests of
Western consumers. Fresh new music, for example, is the most widely recognized reason to visit
the OKA website, which is a fact even supported by the brand’s creator Questlove as noted
earlier. In the case of music, this rising interest coincided with the increased production of

180
The growing list of Okayplayer artists also help to provide added legitimacy. As of December 2015 this group
consisted of 97 different artists or groups, including NaS, Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West, Jean Grae, John Legend, Frank
Ocean, Dr. Dre, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Alicia Keyes and Beyoncé to name a few.
181
Scott and Chesna, “Oral History.”
145
musical content by Africans charted in the previous chapter, which resulted from the improved
access to the tools of representation they experienced through the expansion of ICTs and other
digital technologies on the continent.
Significantly, as an early adaptor of cool, OKP had already begun embracing these new
musical products prior to the notable rise in appetite for African popular music observed among
the general masses. For example, evidence of OKP’s interest in African hip hop (beyond K’naan
and Akon who had both already made their way into the industry’s mainstream) can be found as
early as 2005, when an article reviewing a compilation album released by Black Star Kenya
Records was posted to the website. Admittedly, the author Dantana was largely critical of this
compilation because it was not African enough:
I’ll be honest. I was hoping there would be some crazy Fela Kuti samples or a guest
appearance from Lady Smith Black Mambazo on this compilation, or basically something
distinctly “African” about Black Star Kenya’s sound. Nope. Instead, these rappers from
Kenya forsake their regional historical sound in turn for distinctly American styles.
182

However, this critique is significant because it reveals not only an interest in and engagement
with both past and current African popular artists, but also the desire for something markedly
African to be found in its aesthetics. This desire is further underscored in another review posted
by Dantana on OKP a year later, in which the author praises Nigerian MC Science Fiction for his
ability to strike a balance between sounding too African and not African enough:
He combines his very 2006-sounding synths and production tricks with drum beats Fela
Kuti would be proud of, and often, presumably, his distinctively Nigerian accented voice.
Oyejide does get a little preachy on “H.I.V.,” but the chorus brings it back to what’s real,
and that is that HIV/AIDS is probably the biggest problem facing Africa today, and that
the prevention of its spread is up to the people, an extremely important message.
183

182
Dantana, “V/A,” Okayplayer.com (2005), Accessed October 26, 2016,
http://www.okayplayer.com/reviews/v_of_a-200601104367.html
183
Dantana, “Wale Oyejide,” Okayplayer.com (2006), Accessed October 26, 2016,
http://www.okayplayer.com/reviews/wale-oyejide-200609234760.html
146
In both cases, these reviews point to a growing openness to and appetite for music with what is
generally understood as an African aesthetic, which, in addition to language and subject matter,
typically involve elements like polyrhythms, collective performance and distinctive
instrumentation (drums, rattles thumb pianos, flutes, etc.).
184
The embrace of this aesthetic
continued to expand in both the website and its audience as the decade wore on, and therefore it
is not surprising that in 2009, which was the year before OKA was officially launched, OKP
hosted a party on the closing night of the CMJ (College Media Journal) music festival in New
York City titled “Okay Africa!” This event, which featured a broad range of African sounds, was
promoted heavily on the OKP website and included several performances by artists who would
later come to be identified as Okay Africans.
185

Figure 4.8
186

The launch of OKA can therefore be seen more accurately as the expansion rather than
the emergence of the Okay brand’s embrace of cultural products possessing an African aesthetic,
which suggests a growing recognition among the OKA staff of the power of African cool.

184
For a more detailed description of African aesthetics, please see Soul Shava, “The African Aesthetic,” The SAGE
Encyclopedia of African Cultural Heritage in North America, edited by Mwalimu J. Shujaa and Kenya J. Shujaa
(Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2015), 11-16.
185
Ginger Lynn, “Okayplayer Presents OKAY AFRICA! The Closing CMJ Party!,” Okayplayer.com (2009),
Accessed October 26, 2016, http://www.okayplayer.com/news/Okayplayer-Presents-OKAY-AFRICA-The-Closing-
CMJ-Party.html
186
Okayafrica.com, Accessed January 4, 2016, http://www.okayafrica.com
0
500
1000
1500
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Growth of Okayafrica
Posts Average Likes
147
Notably, this embrace appears to have been quite effective in broadening the company’s fan base
as well as in strengthening its position in the global culture industry. As shown in Figure 4.8
above, the website has continued to grow steadily since its initial launch, going from 110 posts in
2010 to 1094 posts in 2015. During that same period the community surrounding OKA has also
appeared to grow in a similar manner, as indicated by the average number of Facebook likes
these posts have garnered each year, which went from zero in 2010 up to 1417 in 2015.
187

Figure 4.9
188

Of course, the Okay brand’s engagement with African cool is not the only factor
responsible for OKA’s success and growth; however, the website’s consistent engagement with
both aural and visual African aesthetics is an important part of the brand. Although the initial
format and layout of OKA was almost identical to that of its parent website OKP, the early
aesthetics of OKA gave it a distinctly African vibe. As seen above in Figure 4.9, this vibe was
conveyed particularly through repetitive geometric patterns and bright coloring, much as was the

187
The average number of comments and google shares each post garnered also supports this analysis, although the
numbers were much smaller and therefore could not be included in the same graph with any meaningful affect. From
2010 to 2015 the average number of comments increased from 2.2 to 4.6, while the average number of google shares
increased from 1 to 11.4 over the same period.
188
Screenshot of OKA as it was on February 1, 2011, taken from “okayafrica. | Giving you true notes since 247,000
BC,” Wayback Machine, Accessed August 10, 2016,
https://web.archive.org/web/20110201145519/http://www.okayafrica.com/
148
case in Western fashion trends during the late 1980s and early 1990s discussed earlier. Although
subsequent redesigns of the OKA website have moved it away from some of these earlier and
more overtly African aesthetic practices, the imagery showcased in the music videos and large
still pictures featured in scrolling banners on the main page and elsewhere continue to convey an
aesthetic that is somewhat abstractly, yet still unequivocally, African (Figure 4.10).

Figure 4.10
189

In addition to these visual aesthetics, the content featured on OKA also contributes to its
African vibe. Much like on OKP, news articles and multimedia content on OKA cover a wide
range of events aimed at the interests of a young, educated, globally conscious and liberal urban
audience, but on OKA the focus is specifically on African lives and experiences. Of course, this
emphasis is made most apparent through the coverage of new popular urban music made by
African musicians on the continent and in diaspora, but it is also evident in the discussions
surrounding African fashion trends, festivals, politics, celebrities and even artwork found
elsewhere on the website. For example, on December 9, 2015 OKA posted an article by Ainehi
Edoro titled “Chronicles of Ake: A Firsthand Account From Nigeria’s Biggest Literary Festival,”

189
Screenshot of OKA homepage accessed August 10, 2016.
149
which describes the author’s experiences from take-off to landing as a participant in the arts and
book festival held in Abeokuta, Nigeria the previous month. Similarly, in “‘Democrats’
Documentary Takes Us Inside Zimbabwe’s Politics [Exclusive Clip],” author Alyssa Klein
discusses a new documentary premiering in New York City that evening, which features the
efforts of two men working to draft Zimbabwe’s first democratic constitution.
Effects of the Core
Although OKA maintains a strong focus on African lives and experiences throughout the
website, due to its orientation at the core of the global culture industry, its content is nevertheless
firmly aimed at a Western, rather than an African audience. First, evidence of this orientation can
be found in its direct address to readers in multiple specific US regions. Most notably, much as
was the case with AHH in Amsterdam discussed in Chapter 1, numerous articles posted to OKA
feature its home town of New York City. The article announcing the official launch of the OKA
website, for example, is addressed specifically to a local New York audience, as it is titled “Hey
New York: Today Is the Launch of OKAYAFRICA!”
190
Similarly, in an article published a few
months later on January 11, 2011, readers are informed that an upcoming concert in New York
City has been rescheduled.
191
In fact, nearly 200 posts between 2010 and 2015 have titles aimed
directly at these New York readers, with several others addressing American audiences in other
major cities like Washington D.C., Boston and Los Angeles. In this way OKA suggests that its
first concern is with its American audience, embracing African culture primarily to attract and
engage those readers at the core.

190
Gingerlynn, “Hey New York: Today Is The Launch of OKAYAFRICA!,” Okayafrica.com (July 11, 2010),
Accessed August 28, 2017 http://www.okayafrica.com/events/nyc-today-is-the-launch-of-okayafrica/
191
Will Whitney, “Baloji’s NYC Show Rescheduled – Free Show Tonight at the Shrine in Harlem,” Okayafrica.com
(January 11, 2011), Accessed August 28, 2017, http://www.okayafrica.com/audio/nyc-baloji-rescheduled-free-show-
tonight-at-the-shrine-in-harlem/
150
Similarly, OKA also reflects its location in the core of the global culture industry through
its heavy and ongoing emphasis of the iconic Afropop musician Fela Kuti. As noted above, Fela
Kuti was a highly visible and influential Nigerian musician who pioneered the Afropop style in
the 1960s and 1970s. While his music and politics certainly made him a widely respected figure
in the world of African popular music, his heavy-handed embrace on OKA reflects the limited
awareness those at the core typically have of the history of this genre. This limitation is due in
large part to the lack of visibility most early African musicians attained in the American market,
excepting a small handful of artists like Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masakela, Ladysmith Black
Mambazo, and Fela Kuti. Thus, today in the core these musicians often seem to stand in for the
entirety of the genre, such as is seen in Dantana’s expectations regarding an “African sound”
voiced in the review of Black Star Kenya Records’ album discussed earlier. Similarly, on OKA
Fela Kuti continues to be engaged as the starting point for understandings of African popular
music, which supports rather than challenges the expectations of readers in the core regarding the
parameters of the genre. Thus, while OKA does successfully broaden the visibility for many new
African artists, it does so while simultaneously perpetuating the invisibility of others, both past
and present.

Figure 4.11
192

In addition to promoting this narrow view of African popular music history, OKA also
reflects its core positioning through its intended function to educate rather than simply inform its

192
Screenshot of OKA homepage accessed August 10, 2016.
151
audience about issues central to contemporary African life. Evidence of this tendency can be
found throughout the website, but is perhaps most clearly illustrated through the interactive map
of Africa accessible through the homepage. As seen in Figure 4.11 above, this map allows users
to select the name of a country from a list on the right, which will then indicate the appropriate
location of the country by highlighting it in purple on the map of Africa seen on the left.
Although the official function of this list is to allow users to filter OKA’s content for easier
access to posts pertaining to a specific country, the accompanying map appears to serve
primarily as a tool to improve user understanding of African geography.
193

Figure 4.12
194

Another clear illustration of this educational Western-based approach can be found in the
OKA TV series The Roots Of. This series, which includes six episodes released between
December 18, 2011 and May 20, 2014, focuses on uncovering the African ancestry of
participating Black American celebrities. Typically, these three or four-minute clips begin with
the participant(s) taking a DNA test, and then follow his/her/their journey as the results of this
test are revealed. As is seen in Figure 4.12, which is a screenshot taken from the episode

193
An earlier version of this map was also included on the OKA website prior to this most recent skin change,
although here it was only used to connect country names with locations and did not have the ability to filter OKA’s
content.
194
Screenshot from Vanessa Wruble, “The Roots of… The Daily Show’s Wyatt Cenac and Jessica Williams
Discover Their African Roots” Okayafrica.com (January 27, 2014), Accessed August 10, 2016,
http://www.okayafrica.com/video/the-daily-show-wyatt-cenac-jessica-williams-family-history-african-ancestry/
152
featuring The Daily Show’s Jessica Williams, part of this journey often includes introducing the
participant to one or more people from the ethnic group he or she is revealed to be descended
from. This interaction often includes the donning of traditional dress and the performance of
traditional customs by these ethnic group representatives, which is accompanied by a detailed
explanation that once again serves to educate both the viewers and participants about African
life.
In addition to this educational function, the presentation of African culture on The Roots
Of also reveals a framing of content for Western audiences that is driven by OKA’s position at
the core of the global culture industry. Although the aim of the show may be to increase the
visibility of African people and cultures by educating viewers and participants about various
African ethnic groups, due to OKA’s location at the core of the industry, the program must also
appeal to Western audiences. To accomplish this aim and avoid rejection for not being African
enough (such as was charged against the album from Black Star Kenya Records discussed
earlier), producers of the program frequently engage familiar stereotypes of African people
through things like traditional dress and foreign customs, which ironically, further exoticize and
otherize the very identities they seek to humanize.

Figure 4.13
195

195
Images from the Okay Shop, captured via “Indigo Osun Scarf,” Wayback Machine (February 4, 2015), Accessed
August 28, 2017,
153

The description of a scarf sold in the OKA Shop seen in Figure 4.13 above further
underscores this trend. In it, the author appeals to Western expectations by painting its
production process as delightfully traditional (read “primitive”), noting that “cassava paste and a
chicken feather are involved!” Additionally, the description also goes on to appeal to Black
American desires to connect with one’s roots, as well as the desires of all American consumers
to connect with this hip new trend and exciting culture by suggesting that “donning these scarves
may just connect you with something greater than just the warmth and style they provide.”
Although the variety of items sold through this virtual store has declined since its peak in early
2015, OKA continues to promote and sell African and African-inspired merchandise, often
engaging African cool through this exotic “authenticity” approach, not only in the OKA store but
also in other featured fashion-centered articles like “‘Made in Africa’ Show Company ‘Oliberte’
Featured on CNN”
196
and “The Top 5 Most Stylish Collections From Lagos Fashion and Design
Week.”
197

Access and Power
This approach to African culture is particularly significant when considered in
conjunction with the interests and identities of those individuals participating in the production
of the OKA website. Especially in its early years, most staff members at OKA boasted European
rather than African ancestral roots; however, these individuals, perhaps in particular,
demonstrated a sincere and ongoing investment in addressing African experiences, cultures and

http://web.archive.org/web/20150204082917/http://shop.okayplayer.com:80/collections/okayafrica/products/indigo-
osun-scarf
196
Will Whitney, “‘Made in Africa’ Show Company ‘Oliberte’ Featured on CNN,” Okayafrica.com (February 10,
2011), Accessed November 1, 2016, http://www.okayafrica.com/featured/made-in-africa-shoe-company-oliberte-
featured-on-cnn/
197
Munje Foh, “The Top 5 Most Stylish Collections From Lagos Fashion and Design Week,” Okayafrica.com
(November 17, 2015), Accessed November 1, 2016, http://www.okayafrica.com/culture-2/lagos-fashion-and-design-
week-2015-top-collections/
154
perspectives through the website. OKA founders Ginny Suss and Vanessa Wruble, for example,
both share a deep knowledge of African music and commitment to the continent. As described in
their biographies, Suss “spent significant time in Sierra Leone with Bajah + The Dry Eye
Crew…who she managed from 2008-2013,”
198
while Wruble has “lived and worked in Sierra
Leone, Nigeria, Gabon, Sao Tome & Principé, and Equatorial Guinea,”
199
in addition to serving
as an international correspondent for a television news station and as a communications
specialist for the United Nations. Similarly, OKA’s managing editor Aaron Leaf also notes in his
biography that he has lived in both Lusaka, Zambia and Monrovia, Liberia, in addition to having
focused much of his previous professional writings on African politics and international affairs.
In addition to the stated interests of OKA employees in their biographies, the effort to
emphasize African perspectives and experiences through the website is also evident in the
attempts to challenge or critique conventional Western presumptions surrounding the continent
made in posted articles. The most apparent of these efforts can be found in the column “The Side
Eye,” which ran a total of twenty articles between September 29, 2011 and April 12, 2012. In
this column, the author Allison Swank
200
highlights problematic elements of Western
perceptions, typically by critiquing a specific practice or exchange that has transpired involving
the West and Africa (or another minority group). For example, in “The Side Eye: Charity Sends
Used Underwear to Africa,” Swank calls out a charity campaign in Australia for sending second-
hand undergarments to Zimbabwe, noting “[t]he yuck aspect of shipping off skid marks to Africa

198
“Team,” Okayafrica.com, Accessed August 10, 2016, http://www.okayafrica.com/team/
199
Ibid.
200
There were two occasions when Swank was not the named author of a Side Eye article: Vanessa Wruble, “The
Side Eye: It’s Never Too Late – ‘YYES, WE KNOW IT’S M-F’ing XMAS!!!!,’” Okayafrica.com (December 25,
2011), Accessed November 1, 2016, http://www.okayafrica.com/news/the-side-eye-its-never-too-late-yes-we-know-
its-m-fing-xmas/; and, Killakam, “The Side Eye: Nas Promoter Held Hostage In Angola,” Okayafrica.com (January
11, 2012), Accessed November 1, 2016, http://www.okayafrica.com/news/the-side-eye-nas-promoter-held-hostage-
in-angola/
155
(the website calls it ‘pre-loved lingerie’), combined with the fact that folks in poor countries have
already said they don’t want your old crap warrants a side eye for this story.”
201
Swank’s critique
is revealing, both of her desire to privilege an African perspective by pointing out how
unappealing the thought of wearing someone else’s used underwear is, as well as of her
presumption that the OKA audience is a group of similarly self-aware Westerners (evident in the
way she addresses the audience and through her implied distain for “busy bodies” who send in
their old underwear “to feel charitable”). This attitude is further supported in many other articles
found throughout the website, such as in one-off pieces like OKA’s inaugural post “Video: Goal
Diggers, The Daily Show at World Cup 2010,” which shared a clip of the American satire news
program The Daily Show that employed a similarly sarcastic tone to shed light on the
problematic practices of the Western organization FIFA in South Africa.
Significantly, these types of overt critiques of Western perceptions of Africa were
relatively common in the first few years of OKA; however, this approach began to mellow
around 2012 when columns like “The Side Eye” were discontinued. Although OKA still
privileges African perspectives and experiences throughout its content, the sarcastic tone and
aggressive critique of Western views common to many of its early articles has gradually been
replaced by a more positive and celebratory focus on African-led stories. The disappearance of
“The Side Eye” column, for example, coincided with the emergence of a column called “Deeper
Than The Headlines,” which is a perfect illustration of this trend because both are aimed at
illuminating African experiences, yet the latter does so by engaging African stories with a
positive approach. To clarify this point, consider the article “Deeper Than The Headlines:

201
Allison Swank, “The Side Eye: Charity Sends Used Underwear to Africa,” Okayafrica.com (March 16, 2012),
Accessed November 1, 2016, http://www.okayafrica.com/news/the-side-eye-charity-sends-used-underwear-to-
africa/
156
Nigerian English, Western Journalism in Kenya + More,” in which author Maryam Kazeem
writes:
We’re not sure this qualifies as news, and despite Kperogi’s intentions [in his piece titled
“Top 50 Words Nigerians Commonly Mispronounce”] this piece can still read a bit
condescending at times. However, placing all of that aside this article is certainly
interesting as it attempts to work through how Nigerians pronounce English words, which
I think most can agree is interesting to say the least.
202

Kazeem’s willingness to look past the condescension in Kperogi’s essay is in stark contrast with
Klein’s highly critical take on similar problematic engagements with Africa described earlier.
While both are successful in pointing out moments of Western shortcomings in their essays, the
latter does so far more gently, thereby indicating a significant change in the tone on OKA.
Name Posts % of Year Total
CasperKatie 33 30.0%
Gingerlynn 23 20.9%
Will Whitney 15 13.6%
Vanessa Wruble 10 9.0%
2010 Total 81 73.6%

Figure 4.14
This shift toward a more positive approach on OKA coincides with the growing presence
of people who present themselves as African working for the website. As noted above, the OKA
staff and contributors appeared to be primarily White and Western during the company’s first
few years, which is suggested by the names of many of the authors that were included on articles
during this early period.
203
In 2010, for example, there were four key writers who authored most

202
Maryam Kazeem, “Deeper Than The Headlines: Nigerian English, Western Journalism in Kenya + More,”
Okayafrica.com (March 14, 2013), Accessed November 1, 2016, http://www.okayafrica.com/featured/african-news-
headlines-nigerian-english-western-journalism-kenya/
203
Although names do not always accurately reflect a person’s racial or ethnic identity—and particularly in virtual
spaces where users can easily present alternate personas—most names used on OKA are revealing and appear to be
genuine (typically listing both first and last), which is consistent with the professional, business-oriented
environment of the website, where both regular and freelance writers would aim to get credit for their professional
work. Furthermore, the use of names on the website also helps to establish a sense of ownership and geography
within the virtual space, such that the impression of early OKA was one of a Western dominated community,
regardless of the true nationalities or racial demographics of the contributors.
157
OKA’s posts as shown in Figure 4.14 above. Although “Will Whitney” is a somewhat racially
and ethnically ambiguous name, it seems likely that all four of these individuals are Western, and
at least three of the four are also most likely of European descent.
204
The following year in 2011
the number of core writers on OKA doubled from four to eight; however, as seen in Figure 4.15
below, this growth included no major perceivable changes to the demographics of the group, as
information posted on OKA situates both “Killakam” and “Allison Swank” as White Westerners,
“Okayafrica” suggests a generic staff writer (who by default is interpreted as Western due to the
location and identity of the company), and much like “Will Whitney,” “Zack Isaac” conveys a
vaguely Western, yet somewhat ambiguous, identity.
Name Posts % of Year Total
Killakam 178 27.5%
Allison Swank 96 14.8%
Vanessa Wruble 72 11.1%
Gingerlynn 59 9.1%
Zach Isaac 51 7.9%
Will Whitney 50 7.7%
CasperKatie 30 4.6%
Okayafrica 12 1.9%
2011 Total 548 84.6%

Figure 4.15
During these first two years, while a handful of names appeared in association with
content on OKA that suggested a small African presence on the website, many of these
appearances where one-time events, and none of the authors became consistent or significant
contributors to the website. However, in 2012 three African names began appearing with some
regularity on OKA—Bongani Kona, Poundo and Maryam Mtsi—which coincides with this shift

204
“CasperKatie,” much like “Milk” on AG, suggests Whiteness through the use of wordplay, which is a common
practice in hip hop and urban culture. In this case, “Casper” refers to “Casper the friendly ghost,” which is a simile
for White because it is the color that ghosts are most often associated with (as in “white as a ghost”). Meanwhile, the
racial identity of both Wruble and Gingerlynn (Ginny Suss) are known because they have headshots of themselves
on the website.
158
in approach to the presentation of African perspectives and the West. Although Western
participants without African ancestry continue to maintain a strong presence on OKA and
particularly in positions of power (still holding five out of the nine listed staff positions in
December 2015), since 2012, many—though not all—of the regular contributors that have
started appearing on OKA have established themselves with African identities, either through
names, images and/or biographies located on the website. Most notably, this increase in African
participation and visibility is exemplified through the introduction of Abiola Oke as OKA’s new
CEO in May of 2015, which will be discussed in greater detail below.
The growing inclusion of Africans as staff members and writers on OKA helped to
change the approach found on the website in two distinct ways. First, Africans were increasingly
able to speak for themselves using their own voices, which meant that the content on OKA began
to reflect African perspectives and experiences more directly, rather than those filtered through
Western interpretations. For example, whereas American writers on OKA may have judged the
best way to privilege African perspectives was to highlight instances of Western ignorance
surrounding the continent, African writers in contrast appeared to prefer stories of African
development and success. The result of this shift was a softer, more positive tone made evident
through much of the content on OKA, and a stronger focus on admirable people and events
rather than examples of problematic Western relations.
At the same time, the increased visibility of Africans participating in the production
processes of OKA also helped to validate the website’s position of authority on African culture.
As noted above, prior to 2012 OKA was run by a group of individuals who were primarily White
and Western. Although this staff was generally quite knowledgeable about and passionately
engaged with African issues and culture, the lack of African presence on OKA in its early years
159
made the site ripe for critiques of Western exploitation and appropriation. As a result, these early
writers’ very vocal, very critical, self-aware stance as enlightened outsiders served as a means to
circumvent such critiques, which was an effort further supported through the strong emphasis
placed on the staff’s qualifications in relation to Africa. However, as Africans became more
visibly involved in the production processes of the website, their presence itself came to serve as
a form of authentication for OKA, thus over time minimizing the need for these earlier, more
aggressive practices.
The most visible illustration of this increase in African participation on OKA is the
introduction of Abiola Oke as the company’s new CEO. As CEO, Oke is responsible for the
development of both the OKA website and its larger brand image, and per to his bio, his aim is to
“oversee the evolution of Okayafrica to ensure that the company grows to its full potential.”
205

Since his hire, Oke seems to have made noticeable strides toward this goal, as the appearance of
the website has since been revamped, making it more distinct and independent from its parent
website OKP. In addition, as noted earlier, the OKA shop has also been streamlined and
refocused, now selling more music and less clothing than before Oke’s arrival.
Significantly, in addition to these perfunctory changes, Oke’s visibility in the company’s
highest and most powerful position also helps to further minimize OKA’s risk of criticism for
being yet another American company appropriating and/or exploiting African culture. Ironically,
however, his primary role at OKA has been to improve the American company’s pursuit of
financial and commercial success, which ultimately relies on its continued ability to capitalize
off African culture for a largely American audience. Unlike Ginny Suss and Vanessa Wruble
who both exhibit extensive knowledge of and passion for African music and culture as their

205
“Team,” Okayafrica.com, Accessed August 10, 2016, http://www.okayafrica.com/team/
160
primary qualification for founding and running the website, Oke’s background is in economics
and finance, which is heavily emphasized throughout his OKA bio.
206
Although Oke is also said
to produce music in his spare time, in contrast to Suss, this interest is framed as a hobby rather
than as an important part of his career, which minimizes its significance to his current role with
the company. Therefore, Oke’s involvement with the website reveals a strong desire to better
develop the company as a business, which ultimately moves it further away from its initial focus
on promoting the visibility and Western understanding of African culture.
In all cases, these changes call attention to the complex relationship between visibility
and power that is experienced by participants in the global culture industry’s core. As shown
above, the increase in African participation on OKA resulted in a noticeable shift in the tone and
content of the website, which reflects these participants’ ability to exercise power in the process
of selecting and presenting material. However, at the same time this power is also constrained by
the pursuit of commercial success, which necessitates that the continent and its people be
presented in ways that largely coincide rather than conflict with the pre-established expectations
of the core’s consumers. Although these restrictions do not prohibit the presentation of new
perspectives or interpretations of Africa entirely, as shown above, they often limit the extent to
which new ideas are introduced.
Afropolitan Identity in Your Earbuds
The construction of African identity found in OKA’s mixtape series Africa In Your
Earbuds (AIYE) is a particularly revealing illustration of these trends in representation. Much
like the writers and staff members of OKA, the DJs of this series are each tasked with compiling
a product (in this case a mixtape) that they deem to be reflective of Africa. Beyond this general

206
For example, prior to accepting the job at OKA, Oke worked for several finance companies including Morgan
Stanley and Citibank, and had most recently worked as the Vice President for Barclays PLC.
161
theme—to put Africa in listeners’ earbuds—there are no restrictions or guidelines given to the
DJs, which has resulted in an incredibly diverse compilation of sounds. Interestingly, the DJs’
responses to the question “What does Africa Sound like?” have been framed through their
accompanying descriptions in highly personal ways, reflecting connections to their own
identities and relationships with Africa rather than some broader, more abstract or general
concept. Hence, AIYE provides a useful lens through which to examine the construction of
African identity on OKA, revealing the successes and the limitations of commercial
representation of Africa through the website.
As the first edition in this audio series, Chief Boima’s AIYE mix helps to establish the
tone and general outline of the project. Aptly titled “Episode One,” Boima’s hour-long mixtape
showcases a highly eclectic playlist of mostly contemporary music recorded by artists either
from the continent or residing in diaspora. In addition to the mix itself, the post announcing it
also includes a brief overview of the featured DJ, in this case painting Boima as a young,
educated, highly successful artist and global citizen, who was, at the time of the piece’s writing,
“somewhere in Liberia wrapping his head around urbanism, globalization and, as some in [the
OKA] office would hope, daggering in Freetown not far from ancestral hometown.”
207
Notably,
in addition to this general introduction, the author also works to frame the mix as a reflection of
Boima’s own personal relationship with the continent:
What I really love about this shit is the range; it gives you the breadth of an actual Chief
Boima club set from afropop to soca to reggaeton/kuduro and house. My favorite
moments, though, are double-time and digital; the points where Ghana and Angola
synchs up with a flash of “Black & Yellow” or “Look At Me Now” – probably because
of all the conversations with Boima, where he’s talked about that being his zone, his
micro-climate: the African in African-American.
208

207
Vanessa Wruble, “The Okayafrica Mixtape Series: AFRICA IN YOUR EARBUDS #1,” Okayafrica.com (July
17, 2011), Accessed July 7, 2016, http://www.okayafrica.com/audio/the-okayafrica-mixtape-series-africa-in-your-
earbuds-1/
208
As written by Eddie Stats on OKP. Quoted from Wruble. Ibid.
162

By drawing this link between Boima’s approach to blending sounds and his African diasporic
identity, this text frames his mix as an extension of the DJ himself. Because of this framing,
Boima’s mix becomes not simply an aural representation of Africa but rather, a representation of
his own personal understanding of the continent and his identity.
In addition to articulating themselves through the audio project, many guest DJs have
also demonstrated their agency in shaping a reflection of Africa by using AIYE as a platform to
broaden listeners’ understanding of the continent. For example, in AIYE #61, DJ Roach of Cape
Town’s rap group Dookoom explicitly describes how he sought to use his mix to showcase
unknown local artists from his community:
This mixtape was inspired by the people of Cape Town. There are so many good artists
on the Cape Flats who are still learning the craft. So basically I dedicate this to them…so
that they keep chasing their dreams. Will do more mixtapes like this to try to expose
more MCs that didn’t make it on my 1
st
ever mixtape of this nature.
209

While significantly, Roach also goes on to frame the mix as his Africa (he closes by saying that
he is “very humbled by the opportunity to share a little bit of my Africa”
210
), his primary
emphasis is firmly trained on using AIYE as a tool through which to generate visibility for
unknown artists. In doing so, Roach works to broaden listeners’ knowledge of Cape Town hip
hop and expand understandings of Africa in general by shedding light on new musicians and
sounds coming from the continent.
Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole’s AIYE # 64 also demonstrates a clear use of
freedom and control in his effort to expand listeners’ understandings of Africa. Using both the
music playlist and the text surrounding it, Cole works specifically to recreate a Friday night club

209
DJ Roach, quoted from Killakam, “AFRICA IN YOUR EARBUDS #61: DOOKOOM,” Okayafrica.com
(January 20, 2015), Accessed July 8, 2016, http://www.okayafrica.com/news/dookoom-mixtape-africa-earbuds-61/
210
Ibid.
163
experience in Lagos, Nigeria.
211
His thematic choice is both incredibly unique and also, at the
same time, quite common, as many AIYE respondents choose to focus their mixes on a single
country or around a specific idea.
212
In addition to drawing the listeners in and expanding their
understandings of contemporary life in Lagos, Cole also uses his mix to point out the limitations
of the AIYE project as a whole:
Like any big and active cultural practice, there’s a basic core of forms that sustains the
rapidly changing specifics. Last year’s Lagos playlist isn’t this year’s. This year’s will
share elements with next year’s, but no one knows yet what next year’s big hit will be,
what minor inflection will introduce a whole new feeling to the music. Such is the rate of
change that a song from three years ago already sounds old-fashioned. In that sense,
there’s no “typical” Lagos playlist. It must be specific to the date…

So, this playlist is a fiction. I mix time periods freely, the same way the music itself
(finely mixed here by the great Chief Boima) mixes influences…This is a Lasgidi of the
mind…
213

By calling attention to the fiction of his own list and underscoring its inability to truly represent
the city of Lagos (let alone the entire African continent), Cole poses a direct challenge to the
traditional Western views of Africa as a monolithic continent and people frozen in (or rather
outside of) time. In doing so, Cole reflects not only his identity but also his ability to act freely

211
In his piece, which he has titled “One Night in Lasgidi,” Cole writes, “It doesn’t really get good until about 1 am,
but you do want to be there by then, because you’d like to get in at least two solid hours of dancing by the time the
clubs shut down. Afterward you run the gauntlet of cops on Falomo Bridge. “Oga, anything for us?” “Ehn, don’t
worry, on my way back.” And on the way back, you lie. “Officer, I already saw you before na. You no remember?”
Naturally, you’re not trying to drive to the Mainland at that hour. You’ve made arrangements to sleep in some Island
neighborhood, assuming you’re not rich enough to already live there: Ikoyi, V.I., Lekki 1, Lekki 2, Lekki 3, Ajah.
At this hour, you’re taking the uncannily clear roads at speed, stopping not even for traffic lights. The breeze is
blowing, the great lagoon sleeps. Twenty-one million people are in whatever form of shelter they call home, these
human energies at rest, numerous as the stars above the endless city. The past two hours begin to come back to you,
a blur of moves and bodies, and the two or three things you saw and were reluctant to believe, good things, bad
things, badt guys, as Lagosians say, and bad gyals dem. Teju Cole, “AFRICA IN YOUR EARBUDS #64: TEJU
COLE – ‘ONE NIGHT IN LASGIDI,’” Okayafrica.com (July 7, 2015), Accessed July 7, 2016,
http://www.okayafrica.com/audio/africa-in-your-earbuds/teju-cole-mixtape-africa-in-your-earbuds-64/
212
For example, #8 – DJ Sabine, #16 – Petite Noir, #27 – LV, #40 – Desmond & the Tutus, #50 – Elijah Wood,
#60- Mikael Seifu and #62 – Maramza.
213
Teju Cole, “AFRICA IN YOUR EARBUDS #64.”
164
within the space, engaging it as an opportunity to present a piece of himself while also
broadening readers’ understandings of Lagos, Nigeria and Africa.
While many of these DJs are actively exercising their power and challenging mainstream
interpretations of Africa, AIYE mixtapes and their accompanying descriptions also engage the
aura of African cool currently percolating through the global industry. While there are many
examples of this relationship between cool or African cool and the AIYE project,
214
one of the
most striking is AIYE #50, which is mixed by the American actor and hobbyist DJ Elijah Wood.
Admittedly, Elijah Wood’s inclusion in this AIYE project is initially striking, primarily because
he is known for being a successful Hollywood actor without any highly publicized or visible
connections to the continent. However, in the introduction of his mix author Killakam reveals
Wood as part of a growing community of young Americans who collect vintage African vinyl
records, which also includes his friend Zach Cowie, who is the guest DJ responsible for the
following AIYE mix #51. Throughout these two introductions the trendy nature of African music
is frequently alluded to, whether it be by calling attention to the wealth of records currently being
released in the global industry, or the growing popularity of an African music-themed spin
session at an LA club where the two DJs perform together. As Cowie explains of his recent
development in musical taste, “[t]here are few things I like more than records from Africa,”
215

which further underscores the current draw of cool for things seen as African. Although subtle at
times, these references all point to a growing energy surrounding the trending embrace of

214
One of my favorites is the introduction written by Vanessa Wruble of Sinkane’s AIYE mix (#2), which opens by
bragging, “If we start namedropping all the elite indie bands that Sinkane (aka Ahmed Gallab) has played with
(…currently Yeasayer previously Caribou, of Montreal, and Born Ruffians…), you’re going to accuse us of being
hipster-than-thou. Which we probably are.” Vanessa Wruble, “AFRICA IN YOUR EARBUDS #2 – SINKANE,”
Okayafrica.com (July 28, 2011), Accessed August 28, 2017, http://www.okayafrica.com/audio/africa-in-your-
earbuds-2-sinkane/
215
Zach Cowie, quoted in Killakam, “AFRICA IN YOUR EARBUDS #51: ZACH COWIE,” Okayafrica.com
(April 23, 2014), Accessed November 7, 2016, http://www.okayafrica.com/audio/africa-in-your-earbuds/african-
mixtapes-earbuds-zach-cowie/
165
African music, which helps to further validate both the AIYE project and the OKA website as at
the forefront of cool.
The position of OKA within the global culture industry is also evident at many points in
the AIYE project. For example, in AIYE #23, Black American poet and actor Saul Williams
crafts a mix that is strongly reflective of his positionality in the core. As noted above, the heavy
emphasis placed on Fela Kuti as the starting point for African music is a running theme on the
OKA website, and is a product of the limited visibility African musicians enjoyed during the
1960s and 1970s in the core. Not surprisingly then, Williams reiterates this relationship,
describing Fela Kuti as the beginning point in his own journey through African music.
Additionally, much of Williams’ mix is also focused on more traditional sounds and performers
from this early period, which aligns more closely with mainstream Western expectations
surrounding African music. Thus, while the object of AIYE is arguably to expand listeners’
musical understanding of what African music is, in this mix, as well as others put together
especially by Western DJs, preconceived expectations about the continent are upheld rather than
disrupted.
It must also be noted that rather than simply raising the question of Africa’s sound and
then sharing participants’ responses on its website, OKA itself also actively influences the shape
of the continent’s reflection in this series. First and foremost, this influence occurs through its
selection of the guest DJs. Between Boima’s inaugural mix premiered on July 17, 2011 and
December 31, 2015, AIYE released seventy-six original mixes, which have been assembled by
seventy-four different curatorial DJs or DJ groups. Although these DJs have come from a very
broad range of regional, ethnic and musical backgrounds, they all share a connection to Africa in
166
some form, as well as a noticeable degree of celebrity, usually within the music world.
216
In
addition, particularly in the beginning stages of this series, many of these guest DJs also
demonstrated some form of connection with the Okay brand, either directly as an OKA or OKP
artist, or as a resident DJ in the New York City area. While over time this direct brand-
connection has grown somewhat less apparent, the website’s DJ selections continue to allude to a
heavy reliance on personal networks, primarily through the DJs’ introductions posted on the
website. Therefore, the AIYE guest DJs reflect OKA’s own unique take on African identity by
including those voices they deem important and worthy of attention.

Figure 4.16
Again, these DJ selections also reveal OKA’s core position in the global culture industry.
Although the current city of residence for AIYE guest DJs is not always clear, for those who can
be identified with a specific location, it is apparent that OKA has a strong tendency to favor DJs
living in a small handful of countries. Most notably, as seen in Figure 4.16 above, these DJs tend
to reside in major cities in the United States, particularly New York City and Los Angeles. On

216
AIYE #5, for example, was put together by two members from the afrofuturist group Just A Band, whereas AIYE
#21 and # 39 were organized by KCRW radio program host Mathieu Shreyer.
1
2
1
18
1
1
8
4
3
39
DJs in Africa Djs in the West
167
the African continent, South Africa also clearly serves as an easily accessible location, especially
from its most popular hubs of Cape Town and Johannesburg, which aligns with its changing
location in the industry as it moves closer to the core. In all cases, as noted earlier, these cities
coincide with the commercial centers for cultural production, thus clearly reaffirming the flow of
products to the core from the periphery.
In this way, the representation of African Identity crafted through the AIYE series is that
of a young, urban, educated, mobile, culturally hybrid and relatively affluent Afropolitan. This
identity is positively reiterated in many ways through to OKA website, not least of which is the
prominent inclusion of OKA (now OKP) artist Blitz the Ambassador, whose first album
Afropolitan Dreams was discussed in the introduction of this project. Additionally, AIYE #74 is
curated by writer Minna Salami, who founded the well-known blog MsAfropolitan. Significantly,
Salami’s participation in the AIYE series is also part of a recent concerted effort to increase
female inclusion in the project, as she is one of only six female DJs to organize an AIYE mix,
three of which have been featured within the last year. Prior to 2016 male DJs were
overwhelming dominant in both the AIYE series and the OKA space more generally, thus also
painting its take on African identity as heavily masculine.
The AIYE series is therefore an expansion of traditional Western understandings of the
continent and yet, at the same time, it also remains a narrow representation of contemporary
African life. The image of an Afropolitan is a significant move forward from the entrenched
Western stereotypes that paint Africans as poor, uneducated, helpless and hopeless savages, cut
off from the rest of the world and frozen outside of time. However, this image is also misleading,
because, as elsewhere, it overshadows all other experiences of African life in the mixtape
project, creating the impression that all of Africa is now flying easily around the world and living
168
in lively urban centers, where poverty, exploitation and corruption only exist as problems of the
past. While AIYE provides clear evidence that for some Africans, this is indeed the case, it
continues to leave out many groups that do not enjoy the same levels of access to freedom and
power, resulting in the missing voices of Africans residing in rural areas, the LGBT community,
sex workers, the poor, and women, to name a few. Thus, much like the individual mixes function
in relationship to the guest DJs in the series, AIYE itself reflects OKA’s own relationship with
Africa, which is highly informed by its role as a commercial business at the core of the global
culture industry.
Conclusions on Commercialization
Through OKA then, the effects of commercialization on African culture become
apparent. Much as was the case with the earlier themes of Africa Rising, this process of
commercialization has also made African identity more visible, diverse and abstract. As shown
above, particularly since 2010, the embrace of African culture in the global industry has
significantly increased the visibility of African culture, lives and experiences, which, through the
improved circulation of products around the world, has elevated the awareness of African lives
internationally. On OKA this visibility has improved as the commercial success of the website
itself has increased, thus allowing both to reach and entice more consumers with African cultural
products, which in turn inspires the interest of more commercial enterprises and further
encourages the embrace of African cool in the global industry.
In association with this increased visibility, commercialization has also led to an increase
in the diversity of African identity. As has been illustrated through this analysis of OKA, the rise
in popularity and availability of African cultural products through the global industry has led to
the rise of the Afropolitan and the increased awareness of this experience among the
169
international community. Prior to this development, as has been detailed in the previous chapter,
representations and understandings of Africans circulating beyond the continent were defined in
relatively narrow terms and reflected a largely rural, tribal, uneducated, poor, oppressed and
exclusively Black identity. The Afropolitan identity, in contrast, suggests an ethnically mixed,
geographically dispersed, highly affluent and liberally educated version of the African
experience. Therefore, the emergence of the Afropolitan serves to complicate such a narrow
understanding, thus resulting in a more diverse reflection of identity despite its own limitations
and shortcomings.
Finally, commercialization has also contributed to the growing abstraction of African
identity. This abstraction has largely taken place because of African products being processed
through the culture industry. As was illustrated through the evolution of the dashiki detailed
above, the journey of a product through the culture industry is often marked by several
transformations. For example, whereas the dashiki was initially appropriated from West Africa
by Black Americans who sought to visibly articulate their African identity, this connection to
Africa became less concrete when the dashiki gained popularity amongst White American
hippies in the counterculture movement. Similarly, the overt expression of African identity also
became more abstract as Bass’s dashiki progressed from its original design to the subsequent
iterations. In both cases, these illustrations reveal how abstraction occurs when the original
product is modified to attract more interest and encourage consumption, as well as how specific
meanings associated with such items can change over time as they are removed from their
original contexts.
170
Chapter 5
Mind over Matter: The Future of Afropolitanism, Rising and Identity

Figure 5.1
217

Blitz the Ambassador’s fourth and most recent full-length album, Diasporadical, was
released in mid-December of 2016 (Figure 5.1). Extending many of the practices that he had
begun to develop in his earlier works, this newest project is also a lyrically dense, polyrhythmic
amalgamation of various cultural practices and aesthetics originating in both Africa and the
West. Bright trumpets and saxophones blend with djembes, thumb pianos and electric guitars to
create global sonic tapestries that serve as the backdrop to Blitz’s meditations on the African
experience. Just as in his other works, these meditations are often deeply personal, reflecting
Blitz’s own surroundings and circumstances as he understood them during the fabrication of the
project.
However, alongside these familiar practices, Blitz has also introduced something new.
Whereas Afropolitan Dreams (2014) is focused heavily on Blitz’s experiences as an African
immigrant struggling to maintain a sense of self while living and working in New York City,

217
Album cover for Diasporadical (2016) obtained from “Diasporadical | Jakarta Records,” Bandcamp (December
16, 2016), Accessed July 30, 2017, https://jakartarecords-label.bandcamp.com/album/diasporadical
171
Diasporadical (2016), instead, focuses on his life as a globally successful performer. Beyond the
notable character progression this distinction indicates regarding himself as a maturing artist, this
thematic shift also reveals an important transformation in Blitz’s thinking. As is explained in the
detailed description of Diasporadical posted to its Bandcamp page, Blitz spent a significant
amount of time traversing between Accra, Brooklyn, and Salvador (Brazil) during the making of
the album. Consequently, his focus is more heavily centered on the cultural connections and
shared experiences found throughout the African Diaspora world, which, as pointed out in the
album’s summary, is best illustrated by the song “A(wake),” inspired by the Black Lives Matter
movement in the United States, the Fees Must Fall movement in South Africa and the Afro-
Brazilian protests during the Summer Olympics of 2016.
218

At the same time, notably absent from this musical discussion is any direct mention of the
word Afropolitan. Although many of its tropes like movement and hybridity still feature
prominently throughout the project, its lack of explicit reference indicates a shift in the landscape
of African identity. In contrast with the boisterous chatter and impassioned debates surrounding
the term in 2014, interest among Africans in the mainstream now seems to have largely moved
on to other topics. Thus, whereas Blitz’s third album Afropolitan Dreams served as a vehicle for
his own entry and participation into this larger conversation, its conspicuous absence here raises
the important question: was Afropolitanism merely a fad?
The answer, I believe, is both yes and no, depending on which iteration of Afropolitanism
one is talking about. As I argue in the opening chapter of this project, at its foundation,
Afropolitanism is an African-based worldview that developed in response to the continent’s rich
cultural and ethnic diversity. As outlined by Achille Mbembe, at the root of this view is a deep

218
Ibid.
172
comfortability with difference and a willingness to accept that which is foreign, which results in
the development of a global consciousness and embrace of cultural hybridity. While this
mentality has long been exhibited by various African people, it became noticeably more common
in the mid-1970s when members of the New African Diaspora began going abroad in growing
numbers. The introduction of digital technologies in the 1990s heightened the visibility of this
worldview by facilitating the more privileged of these individuals’ improved access to the tools
of representation. In response, the developing aesthetics and cultural products that began to
emerge as part of this representational process were usurped and further reduced by the global
culture industry. The result of these events has been the formation of three distinct threads of
Afropolitanism, which are connected, but not interchangeable with one another.
The first type of Afropolitanism is that which has recently surfaced in the global culture
industry, and which engages African cultural products and aesthetics as a means of selling
merchandise to consumers. The recent popularity of African cool as a commercial trend in the
industry is a clear illustration of this type of Afropolitanism, which is shown through the fleeting
life of Ron Bass’s dashiki jersey detailed in Chapter 4, as well as the dying public interest
surrounding conversations of the term itself. This version of Afropolitanism has understandably
garnered significant scorn from critics like Binyavanga Wainaina and Emma Dibiri, who, as
detailed in Chapter 1, argue that such changes are largely superficial and contribute little of
substance to understandings of contemporary African issues or identity. Thus, I predict that like
Bass’s jersey, this iteration is indeed a dying fad, that will likely reemerge later in a slightly
different form.
The second type of Afropolitanism is somewhat more substantial. This version centers
around the cohort of young, well-educated, affluent African people who make up part of the
173
Rising Generation. This specialized segment of the group came of age during the dramatic
transformations of Africa Rising, and often spent at least a portion of their lives in diaspora.
Consequently, they draw from a diverse cultural palette and are prone to global thinking,
embracing a view of themselves, much like Taiye Selasi describes, as “Africans of the
World.”
219
Because of their affluence and globalized thinking, these individuals have often been
at the forefront of developmental changes on the continent, prompting their labeling by others
like George B. N. Ayittey as the Cheetah Generation. Given that this form of Afropolitanism is
tied to a group of people rather than a commercial trend, the labeling of it is as a fad is less
appropriate here. However, as time progresses the group will continue to mature, many of them
ultimately having children of their own. Although it is likely these children will also experience
their own iteration of the Afropolitan identity, it will also be somewhat different in response to
their unique set of circumstances. Therefore, while this version of Afropolitanism is not merely a
passing fad, it too, will ultimately fade away in favor of a newer understanding of the experience
put forth by the next generation.
The third and final type of Afropolitanism, however, is the most enduring of the three.
This endurance is attributed to the fact that this form of Afropolitanism references the state of
mind itself, which, as noted earlier, has already been in existence for several hundred years. The
recent popularization of the mindset, however, has been facilitated by the developments
associated with Africa Rising, which include diasporization, digitization and commercialization
as detailed above. Due to the ongoing advances of globalization, it is likely that this form of
Afropolitanism will continue to grow, possibly becoming more accessible to a broader range of

219
Selasi, “Bye-Bye Babar.”
174
people. In response, newer expressions of Afropolitanism may become less exclusive and elitist,
although much depends on the future progression of Africa’s continued development.
The Rising Factor
Despite its recent developmental advances, the future of Africa Rising is by no means
certain. Much as was the case in the previous two decades, many challenges lay on the road
ahead that continue to threaten this progress. Domestically, the most prominent of these
challenges are political and economic. As noted in the introduction, democratic governance has
been a core force in the phenomena of Africa Rising; however, political corruption and the lures
of dictatorship continue to jeopardize this progress. Perhaps the most notorious illustration of
these circumstances can be found in Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe has ruled with
an increasingly firm iron fist for nearly forty years. Although Zimbabwe has not been considered
as one of the shining examples of Africa Rising, the current charges of corruption, intimidation
and mismanagement now surrounding Mugabe are nevertheless illustrative of the challenges
currently being faced by other African nations. South Africa, for example, which celebrated its
first democratic election little over twenty years ago, is now in danger of tumbling down a
similar path. Like Mugabe, President Jacob Zuma has also been at the center of numerous
corruption scandals and investigations as of late, yet has, thus far, continued to evade all efforts
to unseat him. Similarly, in Zambia, the re-election of President Edgar Langu in 2016 was also
accompanied by widespread accusations of vote-tampering and collusion, whereas the efforts to
extend or expand presidential power in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
similarly suggest a level of democratic uncertainty that was far less prominent a decade ago.
175

Figure 5.2
220

Often, this political corruption has been accompanied by economic instability. Again,
Zimbabwe serves as a particularly acute illustration of these circumstances. In 1980, when the
country first launched the Zimbabwe Dollar, it was the most highly valued currency on the
continent, worth more than even the American Dollar in the United States. However, by the early
2000s inflation in Zimbabwe began to occur at dramatic rates, such that by 2008 the currency
being printed was only valid for a few short months, as is in the case of the fifty-million-dollar
note shown in Figure 5.2 above. By mid-2009, this hyperinflation culminated in the total and
complete collapse of Zimbabwe’s currency, which has subsequently been replaced by the use of
several foreign monies, most notably the American Dollar and the South African Rand.
However, although far less dramatic, the South African Rand too, has also been significantly
weakened in the last several years, as have other currencies including the Egyptian Pound, the
Kenyan Schilling and the Rwandan Franc. Notably, this weakening has not always been the
product of political malpractice; however, in all cases such declines are indicative of a nation’s
ongoing struggle against economic instability.
Although not always related to the economy or political corruption, violence and armed
conflict also pose major threats to the continued success of African nations. Notably, violence

220
Image from author’s personal collection.
176
has accompanied political outcomes on several occasions in recent history including Zimbabwe’s
reelection of Mugabe in 2008 and Ali Bongo Ondimba’s reelection in Gabon in 2016; however,
other conflicts such as those occurring in South Sudan, the Niger Delta and the Maghreb are less
directly tied to specific political events. In these cases, issues like religion and resources have
frequently been at the center of violent disagreements, which have, in all cases, further
contributed to the instability and uncertainties within the region.
In addition to these domestic challenges, external factors like business and trade
agreements also have the potential to significantly shape ongoing development. As is detailed in
Chapter 4, Western investments and commercial interests in Africa are a prime illustration of this
trend, which is on course to continue as the continent becomes more involved in global
commercial processes. However, as is also detailed in Chapter 4, these global processes often
continue to benefit Western interests disproportionately, thereby reaffirming old colonial
relationships and structural inequalities that further African exploitation. Shell Oil’s involvement
in the Niger Delta is but one example of the potential difficulties that surround such commercial
relationships, as it has ultimately sought to extract wealth (in this case in the form of oil) from
the area without what many in the Delta believe is appropriate compensation. Indeed, the oil
industry itself also serves as a revealing illustration of the pitfalls of this relationship, because,
while it frequently increases the wealth of oil-rich African nations, it does so without any of the
other stabilizing improvements accompanied by economic development in other emerging
nations. Although such colonial history is absent in Africa’s dealings with China, the potential
for exploitation and unequal control in the relationship similarly poses a threat to the continued
successful development of the continent.
177
At the same time, the uptick in xenophobia now trending in many Western (and
especially European) nations also casts a shadow of uncertainty upon the future of African
development. As detailed in Chapter 2, these heightened levels of xenophobia have occurred in
direct response to the influx of African migrants arriving from overseas. Often, this shift has
manifested in the increasingly hostile and suspicious attitude exhibited toward foreigners and
especially African migrants in the West, particularly within the last ten years, which is revealed
through the hardening of migration policies in places to where they have recently come, most
notably in Western Europe. Although the more restrictive policies that have in many instances
been adopted by these governments have not directly affected African development efforts, they
have often quite effectively limited African movement and mobility, which does impede cultural
flows and indicates a deepening mistrust and hostility that could further hinder progress.
Finally, climate change also poses what is perhaps the most serious threat to ongoing and
successful development processes in Africa. Although climate change is indeed a notable threat
to all world populations, in reports released by Verisk Maplecroft, which is a private firm
specialized in calculating global risk, out of the eight global regions they identify, Africa remains
the most vulnerable to the negative effects of this problem. As shown in Figure 5.3 below, of the
186 countries whose data is included in the 2016 Climate Change Vulnerability Index, 63% of
the nations identified as “extreme risk” are in Africa (17 out of 27), along with 45% of those
marked “high risk” (14 of 31), 30% with “medium risk” and only 7% with “low risk” (5 of 72).
These risks are calculated based on 42 different social, economic and environmental factors,
which focus on the exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capabilities of each country in question.
221

Thus, these calculations reveal the particularly precarious position that those on the African

221
“Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI) (2011),” European Commission, Accessed June 14, 0217,
http://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/metadata/tools/climate-change-vulnerability-index-ccvi
178
continent continue to find themselves in, which again, shadows uncertainty over the longevity of
its hard-won developmental gains.

Figure 5.3
222

In all cases, much of Africa’s future depends on how the next generation of youth choses
to handle these challenges. Although members of the Rising Generation continue to hold an
influencing role in Africa’s navigation of these issues, the younger generation is rapidly
becoming the central player in this process. As of 2015, the Rising Generation was between the
ages of 24 and 47, which, on a continent where over half of the population is below the age of
18, suggests a new era has already arrived. These changes have indeed already registered in the
world of hip hop, where the music has now been fully adapted and transformed into myriad sub-
genres almost unrecognizable to their beginnings. Thus, the future of African development is
now largely up to the next group of innovative and globally-minded youth on the continent.

222
Infographic from Maplecroft, “Climate Change Vulnerability Index 2016,” Reliefweb, Accessed June 10, 2017,
http://reliefweb.int/report/chad/climate-change-vulnerability-index-2016
179
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Asset Metadata

Creator Hunter, Lorien R. (author)

Core Title African state of mind: hip hop, identity and the effects of Africa Rising

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Cinematic Arts (Critical Studies)

Publication Date 09/18/2017

Defense Date 08/28/2017

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Africa,Africa Rising,African hip hop,Africanhiphop.com,AfricasGateway.com,Afropolitan,commercialization,Development,diaspora,digitization,Globalization,hip hop,ICT,identity,Netherlands,New York,OAI-PMH Harvest,Okayafrica.com,Popular music,South Africa,websites

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Imre, Anikó (committee chair), Frazier, Taj (committee member), Keeling, Kara (committee member), Kun, Josh (committee member)

Creator Email lorien.hunter@gmail.com,lrhunter@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-429989

Unique identifier UC11264433

Identifier etd-HunterLori-5726.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-429989 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-HunterLori-5726.pdf

Dmrecord 429989

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Hunter, Lorien R.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA