Reggie Rockstone
Reggie Rockstone ( Reggie civil Ossei ) is a Ghanaian rapper. He is the founder and most important musicians of the Hiplife, a Ghanaian version of hip-hop, which is based on highlife music.
Career
Rockstone was born in Britain, grew up in Ghana and moved to New York City to study there. There he learned the beginning of hip-hop know and went into the scene. He later moved to London where he began his career as a musician. Together with his friends Fred Funk Stone and DJ Pogo, he formed the group postcode ( Parables Linguists and slang ). They had with If It Is not a zip code chart success in the UK.
On the occasion of Panafests 1994 he came to Ghana. The Panafest ( Pan- African Festival ) brought Africans in the Diaspora, African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans together into an international cultural festival. At the festival the turntables of the group broke down, the High Life Group Marriots International took over the monitoring and the rapper began a freestyle rap in Twi. The performance was such a success that Rockstone decided to stay in Ghana.
The single Tsoo Boi was the first commercially successful hip- hop single in Ghana, which was rapped in a native language. In their lyrics first comes before the term Hiplife why Rockstone is the creator of the genre. 1997 appeared the first commercially successful Hiplife LP Makaa Maka. He managed to find a distributor in the U.S., so that eventually even The Source in 2001 carried a report about him. In 2002 he published Last Show and won with the outcoupling ' Ah ' (Fa me bone kye me) the Kora Award for Best African Hip- Hop Video.
Rockstone raps in Twi, Pidgin English and English. His lyrics turn often to get socio-political issues such as the difficulties for a Ghanaian Visa for Europe and North America, life in the African slums, the perilous road in his home country, the problems of Diaspora life or AIDS and teenage pregnancies.