Are you an African hip hop artist? Upload your tunes here and we may add them to the next show playlist!
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Listen to all shows in a row
Click here to listen (over 4 hours)

More than a few hip hop heads all around the world started this new year with the feeling that their favoured culture is in a state of emergency. There's never been as much rap on radio and tv, but they don't make classic albums or tracks anymore, or so they say. And what happened to conscious hip hop? Uncompromised hardcore rap from the streets representing the people? Honestly, after a night of watching videos on our local music tv we sometimes wonder the same.

Photo left: Cashless Society from South Africa (track: Tax wars, in Drew & J4's show)
Bring in the first Africanhiphopradio.com show of 2006 which focuses on hip hop from the grassroots. Starting with a pick of the 22 best tracks that artists uploaded to Africanhiphopradio over the past 8 months (from a total of 200 mp3's we received!).

Drew & J4's show includes exclusive new cuts by Salah Edin, the Moroccan promise of Arabic language rap, and a few tracks from Tanzania as a showcase that underground Tanzanian hip hop is not dead. We even got the return of Saigon, legendary Tanzanian emcee who used to shine in the mid 90s with Deplowmatz, then left for the UK but who's back on a compilation recorded in Tanzania with Swiss emcees.
Some names: Terror MC (South Africa), Fid Q (Tanzania), X Plastaz (exclusive new tune!), Cashless Society, Les Nubians, Lebo Mashile (South Africa), Iron African (Uganda), Hashim (Tanzania)...

Cavera does the usual rundown of new Angolan cuts and features an interview in Portuguese that J4 conducted in Amsterdam with MCK, the young emcee whose lyrics were censored by the government which led to the killing of one of his fans by the presidential guard.

Revoltod brings new tracks from Cape Verde and the diaspora, including an exclusive tune by Boss AC (Cape Verdian in Portugal) featuring Pos from De La Soul!

Then there's still the User Uploads. We picked some tracks that stood out from the crowd. Over the months we received a remarkably diverse number of songs from really all over the continent and diaspora: Angola, Uganda, Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Gabon, Ethiopia, Cape Verde, DRC Congo, Botswana, Jamaica, USA, Surinam, the Netherlands... and those are only the tracks we feature here. Our selection was based on excellence in content, production or flow and there was a number of tracks that got a high score on all three levels!

Photos: Salah Edin, MCK in Amsterdam, Boss AC

Listen to all shows in a row
Click here to listen to the whole show - February 2006 (over 4 hours)

The best User Uploads (June 2005 - February 2006)
Click here to listen to our selection of the best tunes that artist uploaded to Africanhiphopradio.com between June 2005 and February 2006. We picked these from uploads by 200 different artists! The list is in more or less alphabetical order, so don't consider it our top 22.

The shows
Those with limited time or patience can also listen to each show on its own:
Drew & J4 (Holland)
Cavera (Angola)
Revoltod (Cape Verde)