ADVERTISEMENT

Hiplife wasn’t originated by one person – Zapp Mallet

The veteran music producer posted on his Facebook wall that the truth about the history of hiplife ought not to be distorted.

Music producer and sound engineer, Zapp Mallet says hiplife was not developed by a single individual.

Days after saying that he came up with the name hiplife which has over the years been credited to Reggie Rockstone, sound engineer and producer Zapp Mallet has fired back saying, the genre was not developed by a single individual.

Controversy surrounding who the originator of the name is has generated a debate among music fans and musicians who saw the genesis of the genre.

Reggie Rockstone, over the years, has been credited as the originator of hiplife but Zapp has asserted that Reggie is not the one who introduced the name.

ADVERTISEMENT

Zapp Mallet in an interview with  had said that he introduced the name  and not Reggie Rockstone who was the first to release a hiplife album .

“When Reggie Rockstone came down from UK, he came with his partner and they both had the hip-hop culture which was sweeping all over the globe as it were at that time and some of us thought that we could go to our root, our heritage and do something Ghanaian, more African and merge hip-hop with our identity. An identity that will project the Ghanaian culture so Michael Kuku who was an instrumentalist then and I decided to name that class of music hip-life and it worked,” he said.

“I have been silent on this issue for this long even though I knew it wiould come out one day. This was in 1994. It is a long story to be told now but a lot of us were behind generating and promoting this hip-life course and it is just fair we give them some credit. Indeed Reggie Rockstone founded that genre, made it commercial but a lot of people gave a helping hand and he was not the one who introduced the name hip-life,” Zapp Mallet added.

JOIN OUR PULSE COMMUNITY!

Unblock notifications in browser settings.
ADVERTISEMENT

Eyewitness? Submit your stories now via social or:

Email: eyewitness@pulse.com.gh

ADVERTISEMENT