Budukusu: How I Created Tongue-twisted Ghana Rap
1 April 2019
Budukusu, real name Jacob Nana Kwame Etroo, has been in the Ghanaian music scene for quite some time now.
Since his debut album dropped in 2004, he has been referred to as the originator of “tongue-twisting” rap in Ghana.
He has influenced a whole generation of Ghanaian rappers and has been diverse in his range, recently collaborating with Kenya’s Wyre in a song.
Coming from a musical family — his father is an avid collector of different genres of music — Budukusu couldn’t get away from music. When he was 15, Western music had started to penetrate Ghana and Budukusu came across rap music.
“I was listening to Nas, Tupac, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, and at the same time listening to Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. I kind of adapted hip-hop into the traditional music I was listening to. I liked that you could tell your story through poetry and the rhyming sequence of rap,” he says.
CAREER
He took to performing at entertainment events in high school, as he studied and worked to perfect this new style of music that had piqued his interest. He also started composing rap songs at this point.
“I’m self-taught. I would listen to people and then try to incorporate some things into a style that I felt favoured me. In music, no one can really direct you into the sound that you are looking to create for yourself. That was what that period was,” he says...Read More
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