Hip-hop music and culture is a chiaroscuro of social consciousness and mainstream commodification, a chameleonesque art form that adapts to every environment it encounters, a personal saviour and communitarian mobilizer born out of a disenfranchised youth movement in the post-industrial urban nightmare of America’s neglected ghettos.
Hip-hop music, like jazz, is an improvisational art form that draws from the long history of disenfranchised people repurposing the tools of the master to create new forms of art.
To cypher is to rap, break, beatbox tightly together in a circle where each person just might get a moment in the spotlight. To cypher is to borrow and to lend, to playfully freewheel through whilst taking an exacting care for each word and carefully considering all the sounds, meanings, and interpretations. It is to fight back, to borrow, to steal, to represent, and to collaborate, whilst suddenly—surprisingly—at times aggressively claiming your own voice, your own right to speak.
Now, Mbale-based rapper Byg Ben Sukuya in conjunction with Talent Africa studios, together with a list of the crème de la crème of Ugandan emcees in July worked on a cypher called ‘UGs Most Wanted 2’, which is the latest in the series of cyphers that the rapper is doing. This project, most aptly described as ‘The Last Supper’ is a chapter two of the last respective cypher and features rappers, male and female in a balanced check, going one after the other on the track. It is a representation of the vast languages and cultures embedded in Ugandans in general.
The line-up of artists includes Arts, Vkay Cee, The Hommie, Elle B, Kvan, Pryce Teeba and Ninja C. Draped with fashion, the video exhibition has the business-minded rapper, Arts, pay due to the game before he passes it to Vkay, a ‘lioness’ on the mic. Vkay lays the rhymes like rain while The Hommie, who comes in succession, blends in with a clinical touch. The Hommie, a product of several major rap battles, embodies a style of lyrical agility and perfection.
He has evidently made significant strides since he achieved nation-wide fame thanks to his ‘talk to the Most High’. Elle Bero, a female rapper from West Nile, known for her flawless flow in Alur word styles, punctured with English, goes after. She flosses and glosses on her rhymes before she juggles it to Kvan, whose wonderful cocktail of funny metaphors and end rhymes, adds weight.
Ntinda-based rapper, Pryce Teeba, bodies the beat in his signature classic way in lines like ‘rap game bw’eba ye race ndi Usain Bolt’. Teeba’s ‘murder ink pen’ is on point and Ninja C, who comes next, adds fresh ink to the pen when she alludes to Teeba in her verse. Byg Ben takes on the mantle and raps like the Gishu he is, ‘sipping UG with a zinge in his hand’. He represents Uganda in language, similes, which is the essence in which the whole project lies.
Watch below to tell us who had the doppest verse amongst the aforementioned rappers:
