Reggie Rockstone livid over hiplife’s omission from Grammy African Music Performance category
Reggie Rockstone, a legendary rapper, has expressed his disappointment that hiplife was left off of the description of the newly created Grammy category for African Music Performance.
“I am happy that we are in there because it could have gone the other way but it definitely became an eyebrow raiser when I realised the old lady hiplife wasn’t in there. The old lady’s grandmama is in there. That’s highlife. Even Mapouka is in there.
On June 14, 2023, he stated it wasn’t acceptable for the hiplife brand to have been overlooked on the Recording Academy’s list of genres while speaking on Accra’s Joy FM.
Hiplife is what sparked the revolution and you can also go back and check before the re-emergence of Afrobeats with the ‘s’. And Nigeria knows this. We’ve always parlayed. We are cousins but you can never do without the old lady hiplife. You gotta be joking,” he noted.
In the genres listed for the Best African Music Performance category, highlife rather than hiplife may have been written accidentally by the Grammy Awards, according to Reggie.
“Here is another thing that came up. A lot of times when people talk about hiplife and highlife they get them confused. So somebody said to me ‘Reggie, it could have been a typo. So many times people have confused hiplife with highlife because they sound so similar,” the Hiplife Grandpapa intimated.
Hiplife is what sparked the revolution and you can also go back and check before the re-emergence of Afrobeats with the ‘s’. And Nigeria knows this. We’ve always parlayed. We are cousins but you can never do without the old lady hiplife. You gotta be joking,” he noted.
Hiphop’s omission from the Grammy list, according to Reggie Rockstone, who created and popularized Ghana’s version of hiphop, hiplife, may be due to recent claims that the genre is no longer relevant.
He asserts that the genre has merely evolved, giving rise to new subgenres like the Ghanaian Drill.
The Recording Academy of Grammy Awards recently revealed the addition of three new categories, one of which was African Music Performance.
This category includes the musical subgenres highlife and drill from Ghana.
