It’s mid-afternoon in the capital of Senegal. Having recovered from the buzz of last night’s parties, Dakar’s sandy streets are slowly returning to their usual bustle. The town’s characteristic blue-yellow car rapides are heaving with reluctantly awakening teenagers who only seem to be aching back to life because the radio station Duniya FM has invited them to a massive hip hop concert, featuring over 20 of Senegal’s most popular rap artists. As the benches of the stadium are gradually filling with avid youngsters, the sports venue resembles increasingly a hip hop haven. Fake diamond jewels, brand new trainers and sharp razor cuts compete for attention, while the ubiquitous presence of Sean John wear gives the impression that P Diddy has personally taken responsibility for Senegal’s aid budget.

On British shores, the name Senegal hardly raises instant associations with hip hop. Senegal, that’s the nation that severely damaged the ego of their former coloniser France during the last World Cup, that’s the country that brought the world Youssou N’Dour, Africa’s biggest star. But a hip hop metropolis?

It’s by no means recent news that the youth of the global village talks, wears, lives and breathes hip hop. In the most remote corners of the planet, artists have grabbed the sampled loop, twisted it to suit their taste and imbued it with local flavour. And still, most non-American forms have a hard time getting heard beyond their national borders. Hip hop is all about masterfully manipulating the word, and draping it in crafty production: anything performed in local languages, or recorded on the rudimentary equipment of an African home studio rather than in a glitzy Western sound empire will hardly tickle the imagination of listeners abroad.

But what if things were to change? While the American hip hop scene has lately been preoccupied with debating its potential state of emergency, some of the most successful tunes have been spiced with samples from the far corners of the globe. And as France, the world’s second largest rap market, is eagerly proclaiming its own demise in the face of economic and creative stagnation, it turns its eyes increasingly to the works produced by the artists of its former colonies.

When I ask for the latest on the French scene, the shop assistant at Paris’ largest music store steers me directly to the Senegalese section, where recent releases by the nation’s three biggest hip hop outfits Positive Black Soul (PBS), Pee Froiss and Daara J are attracting an increasing number of customers. Having humiliated Goliath on the football pitch, is David attempting to do damage in the field of music? According to the title track ‘Konkerants’ of Pee Froiss’ first international release, this is exactly what their group has in mind: ‘The sons of the tirailleurs have come back to conquer the continent of morons, colonisers from the congress of Congo, we walk on the Champs Elysée. 2 turntables, 2 mics, 3 angry Negroes – you better take it seriously. We’re coming to build colonies, African universities that teach ‘wolophonie’. And then, we’ll seduce your sisters and daughters. They love blacks, their shining eyes betray it. We’ll fill them up with little ‘cafés au laits’, who in turn engender more of those, and one day, we’ll be so numerous that you’ll vote for one of us during your presidential elections.’ Rhymed in finest French, these gritty lyrics smuggle themselves into your conscience by way of a slick production which brings together the rumbling of sabar drums, a military chant and hard-hitting beats a la Americana.

The first step to the envisaged colonisation of France lies for Pee Froiss front man Xuman in the creation of cutting edge productions. ‘We’ll conquer with music and a positive spirit. We didn’t leave Senegal to write this album. It is made 100% in Dakar, and is in no way inferior in sound to records done in Europe or America. With the standard of studios and the quality of producers available, this has now become possible.’ 

Sene-rap has indeed come a long way since the early 80s, when the first school kids started mimicking the twang of American MCs in the schoolyard. It has gained its own identity, blending rap, reggae, soul and local rhythms into a uniquely Senegalese concoction. The hip hop formula became further indigenised when the use of English and French gradually declined in favour of the national tongue Wolof. And once the nation’s first rap export Positive Black Soul started gaining exposure abroad in the early 90s, hip hop turned gradually from a pleasurable pastime into a serious business venture. Money started flowing into the scene, MCs and producers cultivated their skills, and the movement grew faster than the country’s national debt. Yet when the anticipated international breakthrough never came, the scene went into a recession that was accompanied by the usual predictions of impending death. Yet Sene-rap survived against all odds, and is currently enjoying its second spring, while the powerful hip hop nations are going through their identity struggle. A brand new, pan-African hip hop festival has recently been launched in celebration of the movement’s growth, DJs no longer content themselves with the limited space of nightclubs, but hire vast open air spaces from army or fire brigade to accommodate larger crowds, and a new generation of MCs is experimenting with better equipment and a new vision of sound. Meanwhile, the representatives of Senegal’s ‘old school’ have been given their first real chance to compete on the international market. ‘We have released an eight track extract of our album on cassette back home and have called it Esperanza. It’s a salute to the whole hip hop scene at home, which had started doubting itself when things went badly’, explains Daara J’s reggae voice Alhajiman, ‘you see, a record label is not a charity. They spend money to make money. We are not here because Daara J sing well, or because [our label] wants to help Africa, but because they believe in the economic potential of Daara J. I believe that we have an advantage that most French rappers don’t have. We sing in French, Wolof, English and Spanish, and draw on a wealth of musical influences from soul over salsa to reggae and rap that have all long been integrated in Senegalese music.’ 

After a decade of sonic experimentation, both Daara J and Pee Froiss have emerged with a new, confident sound that doesn’t accept any stylistic limitations or preconceptions based on the creators’ origin. There are direct musical references to their Senegalese background in the occasional vocal sample, guitar riff or drum pattern, yet they are always integrated in a sound world that connects all sides of the Black Atlantic. ‘Hip hop is universal’, states Xuman, ‘our personal touch is the use of our language Wolof, which truly lends itself to rap, and we’ll give the music our own feel without wanting to sound folkloric.’ This disinclination to draw close musical alliances with Africa is rooted in the desire to fight against notions of underdevelopment, primitivism and mysticism that wide parts of the Western world still hold about Africa. Many Europeans still remain uncomfortable with the idea that Africa’s youth prefers jeans to boubous, Nikes to sandals and turntables to drums. And while ‘urban’ has been welcomed on Western shores as a convenient way of avoiding the troublesome adjective ‘black’, the very real urbanisation of African music is rather not talked or thought about. Having been the first to be promoted to a foreign audience, PBS have had to struggle more than anyone else against a contrived African image manufactured by promoters and stylists. Tired of playing the African, PBS’ Doug-e-tee remarks: ‘we are Senegalese, that’s right, but we are not only Senegalese. At the same time, we are Africans, at the same time we are human beings. We are world citizens, and hip hop is our culture.’

In a reversal of purpose, leading French MC Disiz La Peste has recently put out a cassette on the local Senegalese market that is squarely rooted in the fiery polyrhythms of the country’s national music mbalax. Of Senegalese origin, yet born and brought up in France, he has used the route of music to reconnect with his ancestry and created a hip hop that sounds more African than anything Dakar’s rappers would have ever dared compose. His participation on the title ‘Paris Dakar’ of Daara J’s album ‘Boomrang’ exemplifies also the closure of another loop in the cycle that hip hop has completed with its return to Africa. ‘Born in Africa, brought up in America, rap has come full circle’, proclaims the album’s title track. Alhajiman explains: ‘A boomerang is an object that comes back to you when you throw it. It’s a triangular item, and we talk about a triangular music that has left Africa, gone to America and passed through Europe to come back to Africa via hip hop scenes such as Senegal.’ Xuman expands: ‘The foundations of all musical forms of the black community can be related back to Africa. We have a traditional form of music here called tassu that is very close in verbal expression to contemporary rap. But those comparisons shouldn’t be stretched too far. Rap is rap, tassu is tassu.   Musically, hip hop comes from America, but has become a universal language that has been given individual local forms.’

The theme of the cultural and historical triangle shaped by Paris, New York and Dakar winds itself through a large number of Senegalese hip hop releases. Few countries are better placed to address the topic than this West African nation. The island of Gorée, which lies just off the coast of Dakar, was the last place thousands of African slaves would have seen before being shipped to the Americas. The remnants of ancient slave houses rise next to Senegal’s tourist beaches, reminding eternally of the violation of Africa’s peoples. For Xuman, the excitement over hip hop’s homecoming is therefore only secondary in importance to the more sinister recurrence of human transports across the ocean. In early March, France re-assumed regular charter flights to expel illegal immigrants from its soil. The first plane left Paris on 3 March, repatriating 54 Senegalese and Ivorians. While interior secretary Sarkozy invoked humanitarian reasons, those on board of the plane complained of being beaten and denied basic medical services. ‘People talk about justice, when there clearly doesn’t exist any justice for the majority of world citizens’, states Xuman angrily, ‘Once, Africans were tied up and shipped over to the Americas. Now that they are seeking to live abroad, they are once again tied, beaten, treated like animals and forced back home. If Europeans are to be repatriated from Africa, there are diplomatic ways of doing it. We’ll never see that kind of justice unless we fight for it.’ Xuman has always seen his music as a tool of education and struggle. Blessed with rhetoric skills, good looks and an outstanding musical gift, he has gradually emerged as the spiritual leader of Senegal’s hip hop scene and an inspiration to the next generation of MCs. And while Western audiences seem to have tired of conscious hip hop, music with a message is the only type truly respected by Senegal’s rap digesting youth. The most popular discourse is shaped from an explosive mixture of protest, rebellion, Afrocentrism and moral conviction, all fused into a tight flow over rap/reggae beats. ‘We have more to rap about than bitches and bling bling’, says Xuman, ‘we have always remained the voice of the ghetto, the voice of the voiceless.’ In 2000, MCs’ didactic zeal had played a major role in persuading the country’s youth to go and vote in the presidential elections, and no one denies the influence this historical youth vote had in changing the government. How loudly their voices will be heard outside Senegal depends partly on the promotional efforts of record labels, and the fickleness of the music market. ‘Without permission, I infiltrate your home. Without permission, your radio and TV. Without permission, I’ll spoil your beautiful seasons. Without permission, I’ll manipulate your good sense and reason. I’ll disturb your pretty life, and you won’t ever be calm again’, warns Xuman on ‘Konkerants’. Be prepared.

Recommended Listening:

Pee Froiss ‘Konkerants’ (Night and Day AFD 006)

Daara J ‘Boomrang’ (BMG France 74321 983932)

Positive Black Soul ‘Paris New York Dakar’ (Night and Day AFD 005)

Positive Black Soul ‘Run Cool’ (East West 8573 86845 2)

Various ‘Africa Raps’ (Trikont US-294)

Various ‘Da Hop’ (Jololi 7243 8488162 7)