Accra’s Best Music Plugs: Curators + Reviewers + Everyone Putting You on to Great African Music
When it comes to finding music, the internet is a goldmine. But striking gold can be a little trickier, especially when it comes to fresh, sometimes alternative but mostly radio-absent, emerging Ghanaian (and African) music. How do you navigate away from artists with plenty cash to pay their way onto major platforms to discover truly magical gems?
The collectives listed below are some of the finest (if not the best) platforms curating, reviewing, and putting people on to great music coming out of Ghana (and Africa). If we’re keeping it 100, these guys are the ones keeping the music alive in contrast to the clickbaity sites with a gazillion ads and awful user experiences and trash music.
Let’s get into it.
CulArtBlog
Led by the prolific Swayye Kid, CulArt Blog is a zeitgeist of contemporary music journalism in Ghana. The blog has hundreds of beautifully written reviews that bypass all the fluff and cuts right into the heart of the music. The reviews are unbiased and don’t pull any stops. Besides reviews which also include event reviews like this VGMA one, CulArt also does features and opinion pieces on the state of music in Ghana, all of it super detailed. This piece on Becca’s musical misadventures is particularly compelling.
CulArtBlog says it documents everything music, art and culture in Ghana & beyond but frankly, music is where it truly shines!
Best known for: Detailed, compelling reviews on music that makes you think the writers know songs better than their composers; that good!
Visit CulArtBlog.
Harmattan Rain
Rain during harmattan is as rare as a Hollywood blockbuster about an alien invasion in Africa. To that effect, Harmattan Rain showers music lovers with the pitter-patter of the rarest, latest, hottest and above all, grooviest songs on the continent. How? Harmattan Rain’s wonderful playlists on Soundcloud and Apple Music. Even if you don’t like music (hello alien visitor from Jupiter), Rain’s pleasant visuals will ease you into the glory that is music.
Outside of curating the best emerging African music, Harmattan Rain also teaches the business of music to equip artists and others with the knowledge to succeed in the industry.
Harmattan Rain describes itself yet as a music agency that scours the continent for the music you haven’t fallen in love with yet. This goes beyond the playlists and includes features, interviews and op-eds.
Best known for: Electrifying playlists of new music from emerging African artists, music business education, beautiful playlist covers.
People: Benewaah Boateng
Visit Harmattan Rain and listen to the Vintage Groove playlist below.
iMullar
Music is great no doubt. But how about the reach of its influence? That’s where iMullar reigns. iMullar describes itself as the definitive voice of emerging music and the lifestyle that surrounds it. A scroll through their Instagram and website and you’ll understand why.
The best thing about iMullar is the BTS access it grants music lovers to the lives and thinking of some of the most exciting and relatively “emerging” artists from Ghana and Africa. iMullar’s YouTube channel is an exciting place to hang, either through their 16 Questions series or The Project. Picture iMullar’s channel as a mix between Colors and Genius’ Verified series.
The platform does other things like reviews and features as well in the style of a magazine. In fact, it’s best to describe iMullar as a Ghanaian music and culture mag. iMullar is to Ghanaian (and African) music what The Fader is to Hip-hop in the west.
Fun fact: iMullar shares a similar mission statement with The Fader.
Best known for: Music, the pop-culture it inspires and intimate access to the most exciting artists.
Visit iMullar and check out The Project with Joey B below.
yoyo tinz
If you know anything about Ghanaian Pidgin, yoyo tinz is self-explanatory. If you don’t, here’s a little primer, “yoyo” is pidgin for all things hip and cool and “tinz” is well, things.
So simply Hip-hop? Yes, that’s exactly what!
yoyo tinz describes itself as a group of young, cosmopolitan and dynamic people who promote Ghanaian hip-hop for anyone who wishes to know more about this rich and diverse culture. The collective does this through entertaining and well thought out reviews, stimulating interviews and a slew of events.
Despite its focus on Hip-hop, yoyo tinz is unlike the other platforms which are more in the moment on trends. yoyo tinz is the more mature big brother. Think of it as a running archive of all things Hip-hop in Ghana, from the music, the lyrics, the production (hint, hint, I’ve coordinated beat battles with yoyo tinz where Tekzilla all the way from Nigeria won in 2018), graffiti, breakdance, beatboxing down to DJing. Come to think of it, yoyo tinz is basically the academic arm of hip-hop in Ghana.
The collective is behind the yoyo tinz Hip-hop Festival which as you guessed, is a celebration of all things hip-hop, not just in Ghana, but other countries; unlikely ones like Togo.
yoyo tinz programs some interesting video content as well. These are Soak Me (virtual album listening experiences), This House Is Not For Sale (a podcast on Ghanaian hip-hop) and my favourite, gintar tinz (rap acapellas over guitar strums). It also produces documentaries you won’t find anywhere else, like the one with Akan or this one with Worlasi.
Best known for: Ghanaian hip-hop, reviews, gintar tinz and Ghana’s first and only Hip-hop festival.
People: Essé Dabla Atikpo, Selorm Atikpo & .moshood
Check out yoyo tinz and check out a gintar tinz session with Worlasi below.
Unorthodox Reviews
There’s so much content these days that it can be hard to choose what to focus on, especially if you want to know it all. But what if it’s in digestible chunks? While CulArtBlog shines with lengthy, detailed music reviews, Unorthodox Reviews takes the opposite approach. UR serves bite-sized reviews that give you a sense of what an album or piece of music is about.
A property of Unorthodox Digital, Unorthodox Reviews touts itself as the home of Africa’s best music reviews. Does it deliver? It depends. What it has down pat is how much music it covers. UR is a great place to discover albums you most definitely have missed. Unorthodox Reviews reviews different genres including Alté, Afrobeats, Hip-hop and Amapiano (I had to Google the last one and boy is it a fascinating find).
Like Harmattan Rain, Unorthodox Reviews also educates audiences on the business of music, from things such as personal branding to why artistes need fitness influencers and more.
UR goes a little beyond the other platforms by making reviewing music videos a major part of the brand, keeping all of it short and easy to consume on the go. My first encounter with Unorthodox Reviews was a post on 10 of the best Ghanaian animated music videos.
Shameless plug: Top 5 Ghanaian Animated Animated Music Videos of All Time
UR says its blog was developed as a service to its followers to inform them about new Ghana Music, Nigerian Music, South, East & Central African Music. Outside of reviews, Unorthodox Reviews also does interviews with the 10 Questions series as well as op-eds and features.
UR recently partnered with digital media streaming platform Audiomack (affiliated with DJBooth.net) as a verified tastemaker. Unorthodox Review’s vision is to be the go-to African music blog bridging the gap between the mainstream and the not so mainstream, an awesome vision we can all get behind and one they’re on track to achieve.
Best known for: Bite-sized music reviews
People: Philip Edusei & Godwin Mitchual
Visit Unorthodox Reviews and check out the groovy Ghana Must Go playlist below.
Dandano
If you’re into the classics, Dandano is a goldmine. Owned and run by Hakeem Adam, a talented multidisciplinary artist with a pen that strings words together better than okra can ever hope to, Dandano is everything all the other platforms are with more, it’s got the juice on all the vintage stuff and how it influences contemporary music such as Gafacci’s Asokpor sounds or R2Bees’ ode to Hiplife.
In many ways, Dandano is a research platform dissecting Ghanaian (and African) music past and present. Outside of music, the platform is also dedicated to classic African films.
The site’s about page describes it best, Dandano is a “digital platform dedicated to the distilled love of African Film and Music. Content includes reviews of what we consider classic African film and music, as well as worth new projects that show the African ingenuity and brilliance.”
Best known for: Classic African music
People: Hakeem Adam
Beatz Nation
Producers in Ghana don’t get the credit they deserve. Which is why Beatz Nation has a special place in my heart. Beatz Nation is the only dedicated platform to the science behind the hits as well as the people behind them in Ghana.
Beatz Nation aims to showcase Ghanaian producers — established and emerging — so that rather than being in the shadows, they get the spotlight they deserve.
It has profiled maverick producers such as Drvmroll, MikeMillzOn’Em, KillBeatz, Jayso, Juls, Kuvie, Richie Mensah, PossiGee, Mike Kwa6i (formerly Yung Fly), Guilty Beatz, Epidemix, Nxwrth and more. So far, it has covered 72 producers.
As you can expect of a platform dedicated to producers, it also releases instrumentals of songs as well as free beats. It also covers DJs and some musicians although to a lesser extent.
Beatz Nation is a great idea with so much potential. It’s really up to the Beatz Nation team to turn the platform into the invaluable asset it ought to be.
Check out Beatz Nation.
Best known for: Producers
People: Richie Armah
Special Mentions:
The guys below save for Kuul Peeps are also actively plugging great new music but have been dormant for a while. Kuul Peeps is on this list thanks to Meg, who writes about music for the university media brand.
- Beathphreaks
- Decaf Live
- Kobby Graham
- Sabolai Radio (by Accra[dot]Alt)
- Kuul Peeps
