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Project Inkblot, Feature >>
Yesterday (April 28), Blitz the Ambassador released his second album for the Berlin-based label Jakarta Records. The release, Afropolitan Dreams, quickly feels like the Ghanaian rapper’s most centered piece. Beyond an eclectic mix of mostly African features, the album is built on Ghanaian high-life tendencies more than any boom-bap revisionism. Still, he trades American Hip Hop references with Accra-specific mentions as well as he ever has before and has an endearing way of slipping into and out of either continent’s slang. Now in his early 30’s, Blitz moved to New York City in 2001 as a teenager. Living in Brooklyn—and then Ohio for college before back to the borough—he built a career in the same place that many of his own Hip Hop idols rapped about on record twenty years ago.
He has an unpretentious penchant for interpolation, co-opting a Pete Rock & CL Smooth line for his own back-to-Africa sentiment or flipping a popular Sting lyric and melody into his own immigrant anthem. Speaking with Project Inkblot earlier this month, Blitz detailed the inspiration behind his latest album and broke down his relationship with New York as an African immigrant and Hip Hop artist/fan. He has an obvious humility in having made it this far but reserves a fierce sense of belonging.
“There’s a lot now that makes it possible for global voices to really participate in Hip Hop culture,” he says. “I’m biased to this of course because of my trajectory. As a fan growing up in Ghana and being a participant in the culture and having the opportunity to inform people. But when people try to narrow Hip Hop down to just American culture, I have to remind them that Caribbean immigrant culture is a huge part of Hip Hop. Puerto Rican immigrant culture is a huge part of b-boy and breakdance culture. You can’t ever forget that immigrants are the basis of Hip Hop. Now of course as years have gone by it’s American culture but the foundation of it is Kool Herc who is a Jamaican immigrant. So he’s me in a lot of ways. His experience outside of America shaped this culture.”
Can you talk about the African community that you encountered in New York when you arrived in 2001? When you first arrived, did you feel more alienated or embraced as an immigrant and as an African in New York specifically?
It was a bit of both. When you arrive in a place you want to kind of find your own way. You know that there’s a community here that they’re gonna support you when you need it but you also know that you can easily get kind of lost in that community and not experience anything outside of that community. So what I kind of did was a bit of both. I ended up being in Brooklyn which was out the norm for a Ghanaian because most of the Ghanaian community is in the Bronx. So what I would do every week is I’d go up to the Bronx at least once a week because a lot of people that I went to school with and the best restaurants were up there. So I’d go up there to make sure that I’m in touch and linked up but I stayed in Brooklyn so that I could still have some space to experience life outside just the Ghanaian community. And of course I went away to college as well in Ohio which helped create some of that gap but also kept me connected in a way. When you’re away that’s when the longing [starts].
Another thing I was thinking about is that for anybody interested in Hip Hop, regardless of whether or not you’re from this country or not, New York represents this sort of cultural mecca. It all emanates from the Bronx since we’re talking about that. What’s it like to call a place that you seem to have longed for for so long your home?
Yeah man. You know a lot of New York was lived vicariously before I came to New York. Of course there were certain things that I was a bit familiar with. A lot of it from my connection to Hip Hop and the way Hip Hop painted New York. Then some of it too was just experiential, so when I got here I was like, ‘Wow, okay. It’s not like it is in the Wu-Tang record. It’s not like it is in the Biggie record.’ There’s certain things that words couldn’t even explain what this place is. But I’ve always appreciated New York because it gave me an opportunity to compete and compete on a very high-level that being in any other metropolitan city—even in America—wouldn’t have never given me. To perform with some legends at such an early part of my career. I had opened for KRS-One. I had opened for Big Daddy Kane. I had opened for Rakim. I had opened for Public Enemy. Some of these were in front of thousands of people at places like Summerstage or Celebrate Brooklyn.
“A kid who had all these people on his wall in Ghana—then to be backstage with these people, to give’em a pound, to say, ‘Hey listen, you changed my life and here I am.’ I think that’s like one of the most powerful things that could ever happen to anybody with a dream.”
I was still in shock that here I am. A kid who had all these people on his wall in Ghana—the environment, you can’t even compare environments—then to be backstage with these people, to give’em a pound, to say, ‘Hey listen, you changed my life and here I am.’ I think that’s like one of the most powerful things that could ever happen to anybody with a dream. I think that that journey continues to play itself out in amazing ways. I’m still always in awe. I’m in awe at New York. I’m in awe at the culture of Hip Hop. I’m in awe of how full-circle all of this has come. I’m still kind of like pinching myself. Like ‘Wow.’ Like you said, a place that you wanted to call home forever you can call home but not just call it home but be adding to a very rich history of it in a major way. I don’t take that for granted. I’m very privileged.
Being in New York you’re always around Ghanaians and you’re always around Africans, but how has your perspective or emotional attachment to Ghana changed? I guess attached to that, what have you learned about Africa in New York?
Wow. I’ve learned a lot man. It’s very interesting. I’m realizing that there’s a reverse-longing that’s happening now. The longing that I had to come to America and to live in Brooklyn and to participate in Hip Hop culture and blah blah. I’m beginning to find that the reverse is happening. Now that I’ve lived over a decade in America and a majority of it in New York, I’m finding now that the same way that I was super curious about New York and how I wanted to know everything about it—I wanted to know the slang, I wanted to know what Hip Hop artist was coming out next month, I wanted to know what part of the country they were from, what borough they were from, I wanted to know what street they were talking about—I’m finding out that that the reverse is happening. Now that I live in America my curiosity for Africa has grown.
“I’m realizing that there’s a reverse-longing that’s happening now…now that I live in America my curiosity for Africa has grown.”
I’m beginning to have that same experience where I want to know what’s happening in Accra. I want to know what’s happening in Abidjan. I want to know who’s the next guy to come out of Nigeria. What street are they talking about? It’s almost a mindfuck when you think about how you long for something you get it, and then you’re like, ‘Oh shit, I’m longing for this other thing now just as equally as the other thing.’ That’s what’s happening to me now and it’s influencing my music greatly. It’s influencing the choices that I’m making. On this record I featured a plethora of artists, none of which were American-born or American Hip Hop artists. I would have never thought about it. Me coming up as an artist that would have been the first thing I would be looking for, ‘How can I get an American artist on my record?’ Specifically a cat from Brooklyn on my record. Now it’s like, I’m here, I’m part of it, I live it. Now I want to feature guys from Brazil, I want to feature singers from Nigeria, I want to feature rappers from Kenya. That’s what I’m curious about now. It’s interesting and I’m enjoying that bit now.
Maybe to them you’re that guy from Brooklyn.
Maybe to them I’m that guy from Brooklyn. It’s kind of crazy. That is fact. It’s a spiral. You don’t even know where you fit in all of that. You just know that it’s happening and you’re apart of it.
You’ve talked a lot about experiencing American Hip Hop as a young person in Ghana. What was it like for you to see groups like A Tribe Called Quest wearing dashikis and Africa pendants?
It was powerful. Having the word Zulu Nation [on] the coolest biggest shows. Seeing the red, black, green. Seeing the red, gold, green. Seeing the big medallions. You knew that they knew that you existed. You know what I mean? And that’s such an important part of existence in itself, when you look up to anything, when that thing acknowledges that you exist and acknowledges that you are an influence in shaping it. It makes you feel good. Of course we would have loved to touch, feel, to see that connection be more tangible, but I think that that’s what’s happening now. Even though we saw those medallions, even though we heard those shout-outs. It didn’t matter what the subject matter was. Matter fact there was a song that Pete Rock and Raekwon on Soul Survival 1 and I remember Raekwon going something random and he was like, “Puffing the marijuana / African gold from Ghana,” I was like, ‘Boom, that’s my favorite record.’ It made no sense, it wasn’t even like a real shout-out it just rhymed. But what was important to me at the time at least was that he knew Ghana existed. It felt good hearing somebody that you looked up to do that to you.
“And that’s such an important part of existence in itself, when you look up to anything, when that thing acknowledges that you exist and acknowledges that you are an influence in shaping it. It makes you feel good.”
That’s kind of what I’ve realized that we’re bringing full circle. So we’re not only just like throwing Ghana in there as a rhyme, we’re talking about Accra city. So I’m imagining how people in Accra city feel everytime they hear me say that on a record that is played on whatever level that is big to them…I think the bridge is slowly coming together. It’s gonna take a lot of dialogue musically or [verbally].
Bringing it forward to what your album, what does the word ‘afropolitan’ mean to you?
To me what an Afropolitan represents is an African in a global context. There are many contexts in which an African can exist. You can be an African in an African context where the conversation is limited to your immediate environment. Then there is an African in the context that isn’t necessarily [the same] but you still have to navigate through it and find what still makes you African in that environment. I look at it from metropolises and how a metropolitan affects an African young or old. I’m not an anthropologist but I can examine the changes that have occurred in say African immigration to the West. So our parents immigrated, a lot of them fleeing from catastrophe that was happening post-independence and people had to be in exile and it was very shaky at the time. Then comes another wave that come for education. So their jobs are to figure out ways to fit in these new worlds. So they come, they are the best students ever. They’re doctors, they’re attorneys, they do well in that space but don’t really have goals of returning because they fled.
“It’s really a journey of arriving and returning and finding your place in that return. And finding what you can contribute in that return.”
Then there’s this generation that’s coming up that isn’t really about fleeing, a lot of it is just about access and how can I gain more access so that I can go back? That’s a more urgent conversation that’s happening now. How do I go back? How do I return home? This is merely a path to try to go back with some access. Whether access means financial resource, intellectual resource, whatever resource, but you know that at home it’s challenging to gain that because you don’t have a footing. So a lot of us leave with that goal…I feel like it’s necessary that a lens is shined on this group. That’s why I called the record Afropolitan Dreams. It’s really a journey of arriving and returning and finding your place in that return. And finding what you can contribute in that return. That’s kind of what I feel defines at least my personal Afropolitan Dream.
04/29/14 >> go there
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