Budukusu: How I created tongue-twisted Ghana rap

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.

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.

In order to make it as a reputable artiste, Budukusu bought books and also taught himself how to speak Twi.

Twi is a dialect of the Akan language spoken in southern and central Ghana by several million people. Between 17 and 18 million Ghanaians speak Twi as either their first or second language.

Budukusu is of the Fante people, and for a year he studied Twi and then started writing and performing music in the language.

He read religious books, watched the news, eavesdropping on conversations as he sought to get material that would influence his music.

Budukusu’s father died shortly after he completed high school; and his mother had dreams of him becoming a doctor. She was not in the least bit happy that he was choosing to pursue music instead.

Being the initial stages of Ghanaian contemporary music, Budukusu would have a hard time coming up with money to record his songs, and this wasn’t working to build his mother’s confidence in this career.

“I had to struggle to make money from here and there to do my first demo in order to get a producer. My friend took me to his brother who had the finances to help me record. I had a book which had the songs; and he would call out a title and ask me to sing,” Budukusu recalls.

He had sung about 15 songs when the would-be financier told him to go home and await his call. Tired and angry, he did as he was told, believing he had wasted his time. The following morning, however, he did get the call and he was able to record his first album, “Wonie”.

“The success was immediate. I knew I had to be different, coming out with an album. That is why I did the tongue-twisting style,” he says.

Four albums later, he has seen the industry in his country’s “hip life” genre stand out to give artistes a viable career in music.

Part of that growth is due to fusing the genre with the Western sounds that people were already used to, and making it almost at a par with the foreign music.

Artistes were able to create a case for their music to be played as much as music from outside Ghana.

He has collaborated with a host of Ghanaian and international stars, including British-Jamaican reggae artiste Sidney Mills.

He featured Wyre on “Sangolo”, which is up for the Godit Ghana Music Awards 2019 under “Best Collaboration Ghana-Africa”.

He had been listening to Wyre as a Jamaican artiste “because his style was flawlessly Jamaican”. With Ephraim on The Beat coming up with the instrumentals, his management reached out to Wyre.

The video for the song was also shot in Nairobi by Deska Torres. “The only way you can rise is by listening to others and comparing. Afro-pop music is African music and you can’t shut out the rest of Africa. Trends change; and tomorrow it might be Kenyan music that is trending,” he says.

He feels that the Kenyan market is one of the most structured industries in Africa that can aid an artiste’s growth. In other markets, he believes, people have had to fight their way in order to make their mark.