Akala

Let's put it out there. I am not a fan of hip-hop or rap music. I am not a fan of the culture that surrounds it. I want to stress now that this is not intentional racism in any way, shape or form. It's just that a lot of the culture links to the exploitation and sexualisation of women; a large amount of the hip-hop and rap that I've been exposed to is really quite misogynistic.
However.
On Wednesday I went to the launch of Rife Magazine, a new online platform produced by the youth of Bristol for the youth of Bristol. It's all very exciting, and I was super-pleased to be at the launch. They had a rapper called Akala, who got up and spoke for a while before doing an a capella piece. His speech was really interesting and inspiring; he spoke about how he started off following the norms of the genre, but gradually came to see that he needed to stick to his principles. He talked about how he'd grown up with relatives who were involved in organised crime, and how they told him that, though he might think they were cool, they didn't want him to choose the lives they had; he also spoke about how he learnt about his own history, and didn't rely on the ethnocentric history delivered in the national curriculum (reminiscent of John Agard's 'Checking Out Me History'). Having been moved by his speech, I was even more moved by his performance, which was truly amazing. I've found a version of it on Spotify, and would really really urge you to have a listen- a little long, maybe, but utterly worth it!! Though my views on hip hop and rap in general have not changed, I am quite definitely a big fan of this!