Veteran Nigerian rapper, Tobechukwu Ejiofor, better known by his stage name, Illbliss, believes that Hip Hop will continue to thrive despite the growing dominance of Afrobeats.
He stated this during a recent interview with The Punch, while reacting to the highly controversial claim by some artistes that ‘rap is dead’.
According to Illbliss, Hip Hop may not be as big as Afrobeats but it has its own market and wondered if artistes like himself, MI Abaga, Vector and others would still be doing rap, if it wa not working.
He wrote; “They are talking a lot of rubbish. Hip-hop has its space, and it will continue to thrive and grow. It is not as big as afrobeats, but we have our crowd.
“Artistes such as me, Odumodu Blvck, MI Abaga and Vector do hip-hop. Would we continue with this genre if it wasn’t working?”
In similar news…
CorrectNG reported earlier that Nigerian artiste, Raoul John Njeng-Njeng, better known as Skales, finally weighed in on the controversial remark by Afrobeats star Wizkid that “Rap is dead.”
According to the ‘Shake Body’ crooner, one cannot outrightly say that something is dead, rather it is more reasonable to say it’s time has passed.
Skales argued that everything has time and season, and this concept applied to Hip Hop, just as it would also be for Afrobeats and other genres that are dominating the music scene.
Speaking with Hip TV, the rapper said that with the way people have been opining that rap is dead, he is sure they would soon say the same for Afrobeats.
Skale said: “Everybody has their opinion. Wizkid has his own opinion so that [‘hip-hop is dead’] is his opinion. But for me, my own logic for life is that everything has time and season.
“Everything is going to come and go, and there is going to be another recycle, which means, if you are hot today, you might not be hot tomorrow. Today, if it’s rap that everybody is feeling, tomorrow it will be Afrobeats, and next tomorrow it will be Amapiano, and so on.
“So, I won’t say hip-hop is dead. You can’t say something is dead; it’s just not its time anymore. The excitement has moved somewhere else. I’m sure very soon, they will say Afrobeats is dead. It’s just timing. Nothing is meant to last forever. That’s why we all die one day.”
