African Hip Hop

Hip hop music has been popular in Africa since the early 1980s due to widespread American influence. In 1985 Hip Hop reached Senegal where some of the first Senegalese rappers were M.C. Lida, M.C. Solaar, and Positive Black Soul, who mixed rap with Mbalax, a type of West African pop music. During the late 1980s-early 1990s rap started to escalate all over Africa. Each region had a new type of style of hip hop. Rap elements are also found in Kwaito, a new genre based on house music which developed in South Africa in the 1990s.