Washington, DC — Ivorian hip hop artist Boobah Siddik has been active in the hip hop community since he left West Africa in 1997 and headed for the U.S. For the past five years he has been recording music and managing the site UnitedNationsofHipHop.com. Msia Kibona Clark sat down with Boobah Siddik recently to talk about his career and his views on African hip hop artists.
Boobah Siddik, who now rhymes mostly in English, released his first album, Shadow Storm, in 2003. His next album, Hipolitics, followed in 2004. His hard-hitting style and brash lyrics are often infused with reggae rhythms that speak to important political and social issues.
When I asked Boobah Siddik what influenced his style and the more political direction of his music, he admitted that his music had matured over time. Like many youth, his first attraction to hip hop was to the music’s glittery side. It was not until he delved further into it that he began to its potential as both a vehicle to speak out on injustice and as a way to show alternate images of what is going on in the United States from an African perspective.
The language in which artists perform is always interesting, especially for those from Francophone Africa. Rapping in French or an African language will give an artist broader appeal among the masses of urban African youth not fluent in English. However, when I asked Boobah Siddik, who was originally from Côte d'Ivoire, why he used English, he said while his first album was in French he felt rapping in English would get his message across to a more diverse audience, especially in the United States.
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Boobah Siddik’s upcoming CD, Dead Goats: Chronicles of a Jindo, is due out this month on the independent label, Armadawah Records. The album will feature collaborations with artists such as Wanlov (Ghana), Lone Starr (Jamaica), Sandstorm Ja and Smoka Seezy (Senegal) and Lord Cheik (Ivory Coast).
Boobah Siddik’s other project is his website, UnitedNationsofHipHop. It launched in 2005 and focuses on African hip hop artists, giving them a platform to get their message out. In addition to information on artists, it provides articles on hip hop, including those published by allAfrica.com and other news sources.
With just a small community of African rap artists in the U.S., comparisons are inevitably made between African artists who are recent arrivals in the U.S. and those, like Akon and Chamillionaire, who were the children of African immigrants to the country.
While Africans embrace both groups as African artists, those who have recently arrived are part of a new phenomenon. Artists such as Boobah Siddik, Balozi and Rah P of Tanzania, and Bataka Squad of Uganda, stand at the crossroads of American and African hip hop.
They often speak to both African and American realities and have fan bases both in Africa and among African immigrant communities in the U.S. None have been successful in the mainstream of America’s xenophobic hip hop community, but all have underground followings and form links that strengthen the African hip hop community in the U.S.
