Obour: I know of only Reggie
After keeping silent on the controversy surrounding the originator of hiplife in Ghana, MUSIGA president and hiplife artiste, Bice Osei Kuffour aka, Obour, has finally opened up on the issue saying, “Reggie Rockstone is the only one I know.”
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Obour made the statement to Showbiz at the launch of MUSIGA’s Musicians Time with God musical crusade recently.
The multiple award winning MUSIGA boss said people are just not getting the facts right.
“I don’t think people are disputing him for being the first to have coined hiplife, I’m sure, maybe, they are just not getting the facts right. I don’t think Reggie is saying that before he came, nobody was rapping in Ghana’’
He stated that Reggie Rockstone brought what they all lacked in the music industry in those days. “Reggie is the first person that I know of who brought a certain boldness and a certain endorsement to the music that we were all doing though he is not the first person to have rapped in Twi. This is because I had heard Party Riders, Nananom and the rest rap in Twi before him’’.
The MUSIGA boss confirmed to Showbiz that Regggie was indeed the first to have mentioned the word ‘hiplife’ in his song, and made that song available on mass media and other channels where people could access them as far back as 1995, a record no one can dispute.
The konkontibaa singer, however, disagrees with people’s assertion that Reggie insulted everyone in the industry when he said his coming to Ghana those days has enabled hiplife artistes to feed their families today.
“I think Reggie was just using a form of idiomatic expression. He’s saying he’s the one who commercialised hiplife and yes that was what happened. Personally, I was rapping but I never dreamt of going to the studio, recording the song, putting it out on CD, making it available for sale.
“ In those days, we were doing it for the fun, we were all doing it for the flex, but he had a family that supported him with the funds to commercialise his music and he created hiplife,’’ he stated.
The Mesoodae and Palm Wine hitmaker’s comments come in the wake of a raging controversy about who originated hiplife, a music genre that no one has been able to define clearly till date.
Reggie Rockstone’s legacy as hiplife originator has come under serious criticisms from the Ghanaian music industry in recent times,with the likes of Barima Sidney, Quophi Okyeame, EX-Doe and others challenging his credibility.