Ok where does that leave me, im french speaking cant speak an african language if my life depended on it and apparently I sound like im from the Dirty South when I talk
Exactly my point pimpin!
u speak the way u rap! THATS REAL!
u wud be fakin if u sounded or tried to sound AFRICAN, for the sake of pleasing those who feel u shud sound African cos u born in Africa!
i can speak Xhosa, but grew up in an English(fluent) speaking family. My parents grew up speaking different african languages(Xhosa and Sotho),hence they communicated in the common language they shared "ENGLISH"! hence i grew up speakin ENGLISH!
id sound stupid rappin in a motswako flow!
but i sound BETTER THAN JAY when i do what i do!(not the young Jay.....the button up Jay
)
in fact id say i sound FRESHER than most US cats!
it aint my fault!
i mimic'ed the flow,stlye, perfected it, and made it BETTER!
i learned from it, and IMPROVED on it!
Put K9 against any southern cat, n he'll body him!
Put me anywhere in NY, and i'll Ja Rule niggas!
ps.Emceek i feel u tho!
ideally it wud be great if Africans rapped in an African language and accent!
but reality is, as Africans we are influenced by the rest of the world, in terms of lifestyle,education,religion and business!
And the key in participating globally, is to find common ground to communicate, which is ENGLISH(ie. did u not learn everything u know through the English language?)
All hiphop publications that i know, are in English!
All the info u need, is mostly found in English!
With that said,some Africans dont even have a need to know any African languages.
My point is, u cant say Africans must rap like Africans, when we all know that Africans dont talk like Africans,dress like Africans,eat like Africans,drive African cars,get educated like Africans,etc....we dont even communicate like Africans(we on f***in AG right now communicatin like Americans) we aint sending smoke signals n shit!
We are highly influenced by the outside world(mainly the Western and American)
its unfair to put all that aside, and single out hiphop, and say, it must be done without any outside influence and be authentically African! wheras everything else its not a problem(ie. eating American KFC is cool) WTF?