The objective is also to put forward artists on whom I bet to shine in 2023 like the South African nugget Buzzi Lee. I mention emerging artists on the rise like Ghanaian Black Sherif and Jay Bahd and also artists who are less known internationally but are local legends like Erigga in Nigeria. In this non-exhaustive and necessarily subjective selection, we find established rappers who have undeniably made news in their country and outside their borders in 2022 such as the Ivorian Didi B, the Zambian Sampa the Great, or the Congolese duo MPR, as well as the hits that have made the stream counters go wild in Algeria or Senegal.

My work to report this bubbling consists in making an objective watch of the current events of these scenes but also in letting myself be touched emotionally by the quality of a production, the effectiveness of a chorus, the aggressiveness of a flow, the strength of a message, or the richness of an aesthetic universe. All over Africa, rappers and beatmakers are taking the codes and latest trends of American rap, mixing them with the sounds of local music and languages, enriching them with cultural references specific to a place or a community, and thus creating something personal and original, both in terms of the music itself and the videos. There are as many rap scenes as there are countries and languages on the continent. There is no one African rap, there are hundreds.

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