Lil Fyve is tired of social media gangstas and clout chasers riding the hype of the Kumasi hip-hop scene. For his new music video, Lil Fyve pans scenes of his daily life, unafraid to call out those who aren’t true to the gangster drill music.
The spotlight has been on Kumasi hip-hop for the last few months, and Lil Fyve is determined to get something out of it with his new video.
No rented cars and no fake jewellery: for his new video, the Ghanaian rapper has decided to be 100% authentic. Rapping in the back of a tuk-tuk with his peers, driving around his city, he calls out the fake thugs who pollute local hip-hop. “In this song, I’m trying to warn people who are trying to act off since this Drill music came out”, he says. “They are trying to act like they are tough and are telling things they ain’t living. But they’ve never been through nothing, they’ve never done anything bad. They are just social media gangsters!”. In Lil Fyve’s words, “this Drill music” is the now famous Asakaa rap style, a subgenre born in Kumasi, Ghana, under the umbrella of the Kumerica subculture. The genre went viral a few months ago, and the city is now full of emerging rap stars, solicited in Accra but also in the UK or in the United States.
In a catchy chorus, Fyve tells a fictional rival to wait and step back, as he is about to take the throne of Kumerica. Indeed, the rapper is on a roll. After dropping “Live and Colored From Kumerica (ft. Braa Benk & City Boy)”, which had an important impact, and some much discussed freestyles on radio and live shows, the rookie is ready to take Kumasi Drill to the next level. To do this, there’s no better plan than to rap openly about his own reality. “This song is about my life”, he explains. “Everything I say in this song has happened. I’m not proud of it, but I have to stick with it. It’s about street life. I’m trying to tell you that you have to be vigilant whenever you come on the streets. It’s a warning to people so that you better watch out where you are out. In the song I just rap about the bad things we do in the streets, the bad things I’ve been through, the pain and the suffering. This is real street gangsta drill music. But we are back to do good right now. We are focused on our dreams.” Long live Kumerica!
Listen to Lil Fyve in our Pan African Rap playlist on Spotify and Deezer.
