Once in a while an artist comes along with the vision and ability to turn a genre on its head whilst taking it back to its roots. Ben Sharpa has achieved this with his debut solo offering, ‘The Sharpaganda Theory', an iconic record that pays homage to the best socially conscious lyrical traditions of hip hop whilst innovating a completely fresh sound that Sharpa himself calls ‘robot army music'.
Described by BBC Radio 1 DJ and experimental music maven, Mary-Anne Hobbs as «one of the most inspired and agile lyricists in the world today», Ben Sharpa has created an epic work that takes the listener on a journey into the tortured mind of an artist who has remained fiercely dedicated to his art despite the hardships he has had to endure as a result.
Born in the rugged ghetto slums of Soweto, South Africa in 1977, Ben Sharpa (aka Oh Kaptin My Kaptin, or simply ‘Kap' to his friends and fans) experienced the full force of the brutal Apartheid regime and the revolutionary turmoil that surrounded the struggle against it. While Ben was still a young child, his father took the opportunity to escape the hardship of life in South Africa by relocating his family to Chicago, Illinois, where he took the post of Audiologist at Cook County Hospital before moving on to become a Scientist at the prestigious Michigan State University.
Growing up in an alien culture and intensely aware of the plight of his fellow countrymen back home in South Africa, Ben was inspired by the radical new voice that Hip Hop was giving the disenfranchised and oppressed. When Ben came back to South Africa in 1993 for the first free elections, he quickly set about establishing himself as a major force in underground hip hop, forming cult crews GroundWorks and Audio Visual, who were known for their experimental, abstractedly asynchronous beats and stream of consciousness rhymes.
In recent years, Sharpa's rhyme style, whilst remaining idiosyncratic and hard-hitting, has become more accessible. On this EP, Ben addresses corporate greed, the media, the music industry, politics, the struggle of the downtrodden in the African continent, the ecology and the art of emceeing. At times Sharpa reflects what he sees with the lucid clarity of a prophet, at other times this reflection is clouded by an opiate haze of conspiracy theory paranoia. Throughout the album, Ben rides the rhythms with the ease and fluency of an old skool hip hop veteran, effortlessly switching from playful, witty braggadocio to spaced-out asymmetrical streams of consciousness, to gritty heartfelt tales of street life.
‘The Sharpaganda Theory' is at the forefront of a new wave of ‘soundsystem' music, underpinned by heavy, hybrid hip hop beats with influences from electro, dub, Detroit techno, dancehall, electronica and glitch.
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