The Hiplife in Ghana is an ethnography of one international site where hip-hop music and culture has morphed over two decades into a whole new form of world music called hiplife. I investigate hiplife music not merely as an adaptation of hip-hop, but as a revision of Ghana’s own century-old popular music known globally as highlife. The Hiplife in Ghana is situated in the new scholarship on the globalization of American hip-hop as the Global Hip-Hip Nation (GHHN) that deconstructs the imitation-adaptation paradigm, promoting instead various indigenization processes by local artists and consumers. Ghanaian hiplife becomes a perfect example of the emphasis on localization of hip-hop with its highlife rhythms, melodies, and the use of local languages.

Hip-Hop News Forum “Attacks Against Rapper are Smoke Screen for Larger Issues”

—Sacramento Bee - May 22, 2010

Check out Dr. Halifu Osumare’s response to the right wing conservative reaction to President & Michele Obama’s hosting of rapper Common at the White House’s “Evening of Poetry” CLICK HERE!

Published by Palgrave Macmillan. Coming in 2012