Lagos — Nigerians have always been lovers of music and entertainment in general. Years ago when the late Osita Osadebe, late Oliver D'Coque, Oriental Brothers, Victor Uwaifo and Fatai Rolling Dollars to mention a few, hit the music scene with tunes then called highlife it was readily accepted by music lovers across the country and even beyond.

These songs became the toast of every occasion and many could not just do without listening to these tunes, little wonder the musicians became stars in their own right and excelled in every way possible never minding if it will bring them much fortune. Their music was called the traditional Ekpili music which means playing music and telling stories.

After a while the young people got caught up in this wind of entertainment and decided to join in bringing out their own songs, then came the period where every musician sang reggae and the likes of The Mandators, Ras Kimono, Majek Fashek, Oritz Wiliki and Felix Duke made their big names in this genre of music.

Then came a real move to what was being obtained in the western world, hip hop. Nigerian musicians started singing hip hop with a lot of rap infused lyrics as well as swagger.

It was as if every young lady or man who wanted to make it in music had to sing hip hop as this genre of music was immediately accepted by all and embraced by many. Gradually, love for the highlife music which started it all was being replaced by love for the loud beats, the rap and over exertive dances.

While Nigerians allowed hip hop to rule, the highlife proponents did not relent in bringing out their own kind of music but it was pitting the young against the old with much of the young people going for the hip hop songs while the old people stuck to the highlife music saying they understood it better.

Right now there seems to be a new wind blowing in the music industry, many of the new entrants who grew up in the Eastern part of the country and had the highlife music as their earliest influences have decided to introduce their own kind of music called hiplife which is a fusion of hip hop and highlife.

Hiplife is not entirely new on its own, it actually started from Ghana. The Ghanaian music industry right at the time hip hop came on board had already infused hip hop with their own highlife music all in a bid not to let the highlife music get lost in the craze for hip hop music. And it became their own kind of music leaving room for both hip hop and highlife to thrive side by side without one taking the place of the other.

When the J Martins came on the music scene, he first started introducing highlife beats into songs that he produced for many musicians. His song Good or Bad is laced with a lot of the highlife tunes making it acceptable to both lovers of hip hop and highlife.

One musician who has been constant in the way he raps in the Igbo language, Nigga Raw, also adds the highlife beats to the rap which is hip hop and it comes out in a unique way with songs like Ko Gbadun and Hip hop gyration.

Weekend Circuit sought to find out from him why the new trend and what makes it special and he said that since music is all about expressions, one needs to find the best way to express what you want to say so that people can feel it better.

"There are songs you do that if you don't put a particular beat it is not really felt by the people. We are interested in doing music that people will feel very well. It's unique and it brings both worlds of hip hop and highlife together, it brings the old and young together," he said.

On his part, Ade Bantu, a Nigerian-born musician, making the country proud across the world, has come back to the country to do a new album that will be all Nigerian. In the album, he says, there are lots of collaborations and for him the most important is the one he did with Fatai Rolling Dollars who sings highlife music. "For example I did a song with Fatai Rolling Dollar and it's a combination of sounds, a combination of both hip hop and highlife and that I call Hiplife, and this makes it very unique."

The likes of Bracket in their song, Ada Owerri, Mc Loph with Osondi Owendi (tribute to Late Osita Osadebe), Nigga Raw and Flavour in the song N' Abania, Duncan Mighty's Ako na uche and Desperate Chicks with the song OkpomEkwe to mention but a few musicians that have taken to this trend and making music accepted by a lot of people, both the young and old.

With this new trend it is not wrong to say that hip hop will gradually give way for hiplife and this will be an acceptable kind of music as the old and the young will better appreciate the music.