There’s no question: Dancehall is the reigning sound in Ghana right now. As it becomes more and more embedded into the West African nation’s musical fabric, it’s increasingly harder to tell Ghanaian dancehall from the Jamaican stuff. Take Vybrant Faya’s “Mampi,” one of the biggest Ghanaian dancehall tracks of the last year. The song, named for a common Jamaican expression for what Americans might call a thick woman or big girl, is rife with up-to-di-time Jamaican terminology, delivered in a deejay style indebted, like most any new dancehall act out of Jamaica these days, to late-model Kartel. Watching Vybrant big up “all ah di maga gyal” in a in a red, gold and green mesh marina in the song’s just-released video, you probably wouldn’t guess you were looking at Accra, and not Kingston.
Will this be the first Ghanaian dancehall song to cross over and become a hit in the Caribbean? Watch below, and judge for yourself