Kwesi Arthur is not being flippant when he says he wants to tell his people’s story. What’s sensed is a man who sees himself as a griot or chronicler of sorts. Born in Tema, a city on Ghana’s Atlantic coast, the Ghanaian Hip Hop artist wears his roots like an exoskeleton. Even his idiolect drips with Ghanaian urban lingo — he refers to me as “chale,” and frequently asks “you barb?” during our interview, to be sure that I am following the roundabouts his responses take. Though he raps and sings in English and Ghanaian pidgin English, his native Twi furnishes his songs with the most words. While the psychic undercurrents of his songs may be traced to Community 9 in Tema, he has only a global destiny in mind for his music, the language barrier be damned. “Music,” he says with philosophical equanimity, “is a universal language.” Philosophy gives way to mild braggadocio when he says, “My music is played even in India, Thailand…”
Arthur likens Tema to Harlem, that New York City neighborhood famed for its art renaissance of the 1920s and ‘30s. Like Harlem, Kwesi says, Tema is “home to different cultures and all kinds of people,” which together make up the coat of many influences draping over his artistic identity. In spite of its virtues and wealth of talents — it also produced Sarkodie, Ghana’s most renowned rap figure yet — Tema is thin on material wealth. Growing up, Arthur was dealt a great slice of adversity. The son of a low-earning electrician father and a hairstylist mother, Kwesi and his family once had to live in his mother’s wooden kiosk. “Whenever we needed to use the washroom, we had to go beg one of my mother’s friends,” a pensive tone now where braggadocio once was.
It was not all dank and dreary. Kwesi’s childhood has some sunny moments, too. He recounts going to church with his grandmother with the double emotions of fondness and loss — she passed away in 2020. “My grandmother was my inspiration. She taught me how to love,” he says. All that time spent in church guaranteed a spiritual aspect to his music, which going by the church’s storied role in black music’s trajectory, is hardly a surprise. Black music heavyweights like Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, and Otis Redding, to name a few, all have the church to thank for giving them their first platforms and a piece of their musical identity.
In some way, Kwesi’s church influence perhaps is a counterpoint against the hedonism that typifies Hip Hop. While his grandmother was content with leading him to church, his mother wanted him to make church songs. Pre-Kardashian Kanye may have already explained why that would have been problematic. ‘Ye raps on Jesus Walks: “If I talk about God / my record won’t get played, huh.” There is a bit of hyperbole in Ye’s line, but its truth can be hardly contested. Like Ye, Arthur has largely made songs more befitting for a club than a cathedral. But in Adom, the last song in his debut album, Son of Jacob, Arthur reconciles religion with hiplife, the track’s churchy instrumentation as evangelical as any of Saint Paul’s missionary journeys.
Besides church, Arthur’s childhood orbited around street football. Before music, in fact, Arthur nursed thoughts of becoming a professional footballer, joining a local football team in Tema for that purpose. For a kid used to deprivation, it is easy to see why the allure of football superstardom held sway. There was something else that got Kwesi going, and that was the Ghanaian footballer, Abubakari Yakubu, also Tema-born, who was neighbors with young Kwesi at the time. Yakubu joined AFC Ajax in the Netherlands at 17. And Kwesi, as like anyone in close quarters with greatness or celebrity of some kind, thought that the fact of proximity validated both his talent and ambition.
By the time Arthur was in Tema Secondary School, his football days were well behind him. While here, he met Macaulay, a secondary school boy like him in a different school, who helped him cultivate an affinity with HipHop. Pre-Macaulay, he had been more attuned to Ghanaian music and successfully resisted the influences of the likes of DMX and Tupac, whom his uncle played all the time. His time at Tema Secondary School coincided with the YMCMB era of the 2010s, with Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, and Drake providing the new rap inductee a handhold as he chased his nascent obsession. Listening to Drake’s debut album, Thank Me Later (2010), Arthur resolved to make an album of his own, where he planned to tell “the story of my people.”
Twelve years and one global pandemic later, the promise has been fulfilled with his debut album Son of Jacob set for release this year. With an album title alluding to a Biblical character, you can say that he has given his mother what she asked for, even if nominally, as SOJ is not gospel music. The album permits us entry into the life of a flawed human, as Kwesi is both godly and godless through the twelve tracks comprising the album, the number of which can be taken as standing for the twelve tribes of Israel. Concerned as it is with harvesting details from Kwesi’s personal life, it is not immediately obvious how this autobiographical album tells the story of the Akan people of Ghana — of which Arthur belongs — a story he has long promised to tell. Arthur explains himself: “You know, the Akans in Ghana and Ivory Coast have a link with the Israelites. Like them, we circumcise our males on the eighth day. I wanted to bring attention to my people who have been neglected for a long time. Son of Jacob is speaking for my people: their flaws, trials, beliefs, convictions…”
“I don’t want to be put in a box,” Kwesi says after I ask him if he sees himself as more of a singer than a rapper. Our conversation settles on his creative process, which he describes as “varied.” For the song Paper, the beat inspired the jaunty tone and lyricism of the song. In writing Drama in a hotel room, the lyrics preceded the melody.
The 27-year-old has his mind cast on future projects already. “I dey learn new things every day,” he says, before adding that “People should expect new stuff from me; more exciting stuff. And not just music.”