Representing Africa in Contemporary Nigerian Hip Hop: A Video Analysis of Ruggedman's “Ruggedy Baba”

Abstract

Since MTV pioneered the art of music video broadcast in 1981, music video has gradually become one of the most important outlets for music promotion and an indispensable marketing strategy for an artiste. In recent times music video has almost assumed a life of its own and somehow larger than the music itself with a lot of investment in energy and finance being put into it by artists, labels and management. Africa on the other hand is catching on with this trend as there is an overt visibility of MTV Africa and other satellite television stations like Channel - O, Soundcity, Nigezie and Trace solely dedicated to promoting music videos. This paper examines the concept of music video in the Nigerian popular music context while extracting its functionality in the contemporary Nigerian hip hop genre. Against the backdrop of the ‘Ruggedy Baba’ video this research isolates the primary function of a video to music and argues that through visual representation of music, identities can be formulated as presented in ‘Ruggedy Baba’ where traditional Africa is prominently represented in a music genre deeply rooted in urban street culture.