Stumbled upon this dude tonight while checking out sites that linked to us. A couple weeks back Africa Is A Country pledged their support after viewing our Capitalist Pigs tee, which led to a surprising amount of traffic stemming from that post. Naturally i wanted to see what theyre all about.
From the short amount of time that I’ve spent looking through their site,it comes across as a refreshing, no nonsense blog that focuses on African issues without the usual Western Media slant that Africa cannot help itself.
In any case, without taking this post in too heavy of a direction (have enough of that around here already, HA!), I wanted to share this vid. 99% of the time i hear someone rapping in french and it just does NOT sound right. Odd rhythm and rhyming structure and a lack of, well… I cant really put my finger on it.
But this just feels RIGHT. Shit is mellow and funky at the same time, dudes rhythm is great, the backing band is ill as fuck, and I don’t need to know what he’s saying to enjoy the track (my litmus test for enjoying foreign language vocals). The dude’s name is Bajoli, a Congolese resident of Belgium. The potent mix of Afrobeat and his French flow just works. Not to mention all the vids were shot in different areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo- the visual impact is amazing.
This track is pretty much a remix of the traditional song celebrating the Congolese Independence 50 years ago.
Here’s another track from his Hotel Impala album… Theres a bit of (nearly) spoken word in the beginning… Track drops hard after the 2 minute mark.
BALOJI feat. KONONO n1 – KARIBU YA BINTOU from BALOJI on Vimeo.
Cool Graham J’aime la musique!
Thanks for the shout out! And yes, Baloji is the future.
– Sean
man! these tracks rock. I live in the Caribbean and these brought more sun!
thx for introducing me to new music.
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