Another hit from Ghana, new duo Ruff N Smooth attacking clubs and airwaves across the country, every time we listen to this song it brings us back to Accra… enjoy the tropical love! Album drops September 14, but you can already grab the song for free, we just ask for your email, we won’t abuse it too much, we promise.
It’s official!! We are letting you take over 4×4’s vocals to make whatever you see fit out of this massive banger from Ghana… we heard this song playing 20 times a day on the radio, at outdoor bars, at weddings… now is the chance to see where else this track can end up!! Download the acapella track from Soundcloud above, and upload your remix to our dropbox by September 15:
The prize… is getting released on one of the most forward thinking labels of African music, he he. We will put out an EP with our favorite remixes, as we did for Ze Bula and Combination. Download the original song in nearly any format below – we just ask for your email, cool?
LONG OVERDUE!!!! We know it, and we are slightly ashamed of it… well not that ashamed really, because good things are well worth waiting for. And we are proud to announce very good things!!
At last, the winners of the Jali Bakary Konteh remix contest are in…
From Fulda / Würzburg Germany, our friends Hat+Hoodie pieced together a massive banger:
From Glasgow, Scotland, we couldn’t help but bring back the dubbed out sound of Voltergeist:
From San Francisco, California, we are excited to feature a deep cut by Señor Oz of Afrolicious:
And last but not least, a newbie on our radar, artfx! from Berlin, Germany:
This EP will come out in September, as soon as we get final cuts and master them… thanks again to all of you who submitted their remix, it was a very tough call!!! And again, congratulations to the winners, we love your choons!!!
This song is a HIIIIIIT in Ghana! 4X4 have been around for a while, but are finally making it REAL BIG, thanks in part to this massive track, produced by Appietus – of course ;-p
The song takes place at the Boomerang nightclub, where we spent a few decadent nights… As of late Boomerang has been hosting some pretty sick Francophone parties, with plenty of coupé décalé and students from across Francophone Africa frantically shaking their bobarabas.
You can download the track for free in exchange for your email – which we promise we will not share with the entire world, no 419 here!
The album is ouuuuuut! Indulge into it, plenty PLENTY fresh sounds from the land of the Black Stars… listen below, buy directly from us here or go to iTunes.
And… you can still get this great track for FREEEEE… all we ask for is your email so we can send you occasional Akwaaba propaganda, nothing too serious!
We are excited… it’s been WAY TOO LONG IN THE MAKING. But at last we are about to release the first album from our incredible trip to Ghana. Appietus is arguably the most successful beat maker in Ghana. He’s been around for well over a decade, and has produced so many of the country’s hits, we really don’t know which to even list.
He recently released a compilation, where he highlights some of the best Ghana has to offer right now. From huge names such as Samini, Kwabena Kwabena or KK Fosu, to up and coming voices such as Old Sodja, Mike or…. Mframa.
Ghana Lady, this song should be your summer anthem!!! Grab it for free here, give us your email and you’ll get the album first…
Our friend Gervase de Wilde writes for the Guardian, and we’ve been secretly hoping he’d get Just A Band a feature in the paper… but as it turns out the band shows up in the travel section as a fine example of Nairobi’s lively music scene. No need to paraphrase, just click on the image!
Marc of Afrobeat Blog has been very supportive of our work in the past. But his latest review of Just A Band’s album 82 is the best so far… we’re happy he dug JAB’s music, in his own words:
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: nobody is doing more to expose the best underground music in Africa to increasingly wider audiences than Akwaaba. The fair trade record label started by Benjamin Lebrave has given the world possibly their best album yet, 82 from Kenyan pop outfit Just a Band.
You may know Just a Band from their incredibly popular youtube video for Ha-He, but Just a Band has much more to offer than imitations of Chuck Norris. This album covers many bases, mixing bumping club tracks with cooler hip-hop and heartfelt down-tempo tracks. The three artists that make up Just a Band, Blinky, Dan and Jim, bring out different elements of their personality to collaboratively create a style all their own.
Just a Band accomplishes something truly impressive: they manage to create music that has widespread mainstream appeal without totally foregoing their integrity as artists. Many African musicians struggling to find their way often go for easy cop outs and cheesy effects, but Just a Band creates a production style that sounds contemporary and clean. They also know how to mesh hip-hop style lyrics in English or Swahili with R&B style vocals and electronic beats. The end result is something new and interesting you probably wouldn’t expect to come out of Africa.
This album is something new and different. If you were to listen to it blindly, you might think it came from a house producer in Miami. That’s what I like about it though, it’s maintains its African identity while simultaneously being obviously affected by European and American electronic musical styles. While it’s not easy to cross over as a Kenyan pop star, these guys have as good a shot as anybody.”
I’ve managed to get unlimited web on my blackberry here in Ghana, and now a 3G USB modem, and before the modem the occasional cyber café. Well as it turns out, all of this is usually not enough to stream the tracks submitted for the remix… so how can we pick a winner?!?! The good new for prospective winners is that we might as well extend the submission period. So knock yourselves out, we’re giving you til the end of May. We’ve been getting emails telling us how great the remixes are – we believe it, we just hope we can actually LISTEN to them soon!!!!
| Beatport
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