American rapper Chance the Rapper has advocated for every Black American to experience Ghana firsthand.
In a conversation with former NFL quarterback Cam Newton, Chance the Rapper shared how his first trip to Ghana came about.
According to him, at the time, he was overwhelmed with challenges and felt the need to clear his mind. That was when he noticed his friend, rapper Vic Mensa, enjoying life in Ghana.
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“I’m like yo, I’m dealing with these different things, I just need to take my mind off it. I’m seeing pictures of you out there at clubs and in skyscrapers and shit I ain’t never seen nothing like this or knew anything about this in Ghana. So I want to see that. I want to just take my mind off shit so I came out there with him and really I was going out there to have fun,” Chance recalled.
According to him, what he experienced in Accra changed his perspective. He described the nightlife as unlike anything he had ever seen, with the city buzzing until the morning.
“It was lit, like they have hella clubs. They’d be going to the club at 7 a.m. Ghana’s insane. Ghana is a thing. They go to the club at 6 a.m.,” he said.
Chance also spoke about the atmosphere in Ghana during the festive season, popularly called “Detty December.”
He said that during December and January in Ghana, the whole of Accra feel like a carnival, with people from across the world flying in to experience it.
“A lot of black people from different countries, even that’s not Ghanaian, go around like December, January time and they spend like their Christmas through New Year’s there. It’s literally just lit, like it looks like the whole city of Accra is like a festival now,” he explained.
Chance also mentioned that what makes Ghana special is the sense of history and identity it offers Black people in the diaspora.
He noted that Ghana has history that goes beyond the transatlantic slave trade which many people could go learn about, such as the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president.
“I’m not trying to tell everybody to go to Accra, but the reason why I loved it so much was because on a side of me doing all this lit shit, they got a lot of history, a lot of our history that we don’t know about. And I’m not talking about like slave trade history.
“I’m talking about like revolutionary, like crazy history. Like who became the first president, he was like an international icon in the 70s. He in a lot of ways influenced the civil rights movement over here,” Chance said.
Also catch the latest episode of Talkertainment with Ghana’s most-sought-after MC/Hypeman, Kojo Manuel, below:
AK/EB
