Hip-life; the why and how?

                Hip-life (West Africa's Funk)
In Ghana globalization is transforming society and creating a challenging urban environment for youth: high unemployment, seemingly unstoppable cultural erosion, and a harsh disparity between personal ambition and opportunities for advancement. Structural transformation has relegated youth to the margins of society. This blog examines ‘hiplife’, a Ghanaian youth musical genre that fuses American hip hop and Ghanaian highlife, as a dynamic intersection of these trends. This blog shows that hiplife forms the foundation of a distinct youth counter-public, giving youth a unique platform to project their voice into the public sphere and challenge the exclusion of the dominant adult public. Ultimately, hiplife strengthens the public sphere through the generation of public discourse. Through an examination of the hiplife movement in an economic, political and social context, this blog demonstrates both the experience of socio-cultural change and the agency of youth as a force behind socio-cultural change. This blog examines the various opportunities that hiplife presents to the Ghanaian youth; as a legitimate source of livelihood. It also analyses the various avenues it creates for other people who are directly or indirectly linked to hiplife and music in General