Nkonkonsa Celebrity Gossip From Africa
Veteran Ghanaian rapper, Reginald Yaw Asante Osei, well known as Reggie Rockstone in the music industry, created the music genre known as Hiplife by fusing Ghanaian Highlife music with Hip-hop.
Payola, in his opinion, is one of the obstacles to Hiplife’s growth.
Payola is slang for paying or bribing DJs, radio hosts, or TV networks to promote musical works, for those who are unfamiliar with the term. Typically, this is prohibited in the sector in many nations.
Reggie asserted that paying Payola before having your songs played on air is one of the biggest things that crippled artists and promoters who were promoting the Hiplife brand as a music genre when he was explaining this concept and how it hampered the progress of Hiplife musicians in promoting Hiplife songs.
This accusation follows Tony Best asking him on Akoma FM’s entertainment 360 whether he thought hip-hop was dead, as alleged by Ghanaian rapper M.anifest in a recent BBC documentary called Hiplife Rewind.
“I can’t say that Hiplife is dead, and I said that in the documentary that I can’t sit here in Ghana and say that something I gave birth and name to is dead, even though I understand his(M.anifest) sentiments.
“The brand Hiplife has become quite unattractive to associate with for various reasons. One of which is radio stations demanding Payola before playing our music. This was what they were doing to us when we had just started laying the foundation of the genre where we had little to pay for the music to be played”, Reggie said.
The legendary entertainer who also acts as an entrepreneur, declared that he favors appreciating a DJ or any network who plays his music voluntarily to having to pay before it airs.
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