"Music is my life"-- Kojo Rhyme

By Oral Ofori

Kojo Rhyme is a young musician from Ghana who is searching for his big breakthrough like the many others out there who see music as an avenue to exhibit their talents and skills. “Music is the reason I am alive today and I believe I can use my musical talents to positively affect people” Kojo say.

His music romance started in 2008 when he met his now beat maker Reggie who was running a studio called Missing Link. Reggie introduced Kojo to Dr. Duncan who was a DJ with a radio station based in Tema called Adom FM.

Dr. Duncan had a music show that aired once weekly to provide a platform for upcoming young musicians, especially rappers to share their talents with listeners in the country and to hopefully land potential producers and record deals.

The show is called Kasahare show and it gave Kojo the opportunity he needed to finally announce his presence to a much larger audience when he first appeared on it. Dr. Duncan was so impressed by his performance that whenever Kojo got on air he was encouraged to get into a rap battle.

Some rappers Kojo valiantly battled on the mike include established hiplife artistes like Koo Fanti and Guru of "Bois abre" fame. Dr. Duncan saw the potential Kojo had and offered to sign him on to Duncwills Entertainment but the young musician had gained admission to college at the time and thus chose to pursue academics.

As the youngest in a single parent home, Kojo said his mother strictly insisted all her children pursue academics to the highest possible level, which is why he walked away from what could have been his first record deal. “Rap and music is my life so I couldn’t stop pursuing it while in school. Whenever the opportunity presented itself I will run home from school to spend sometime with "Sheekwon”—my engineer at the time—to make records".

It was during some of his visits to the recording studio that he decided to jump on Kanye West's ‘monster’ and Travie McCoy's ‘Billionaire’ instrumentals with his own local Ghanaian Twi language rap. “To my surprise both cover versions received attention as they ended up on Ghanamotion and Bigxgh, two respected online music portals in Ghana while the 'Billionaire' cover got a couple air plays on yfm and xfm"

Kojo Rhyme spent time focusing on personal issues as he steered his life towards the desired musical path with performances at community musical shows and radio appearances till 2013 when he felt the time was right for some more mix tapes, one of which he released in May of 2014 called ‘Arabian Nights’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEfAnugTt6g) which is receiving air plays on some radio stations in Ghana.

“I have been working on my biggest project with my producer Reggie under the record label Bush Boy and we are both excited about how it’s coming up. It is a depiction of how far I have grown in the music game and I feel this record will have something for everyone when it is finished, for now it is untitled but purely entertaining”—says Kojo about his debut album.

To find out more about Kojo Rhymes and his music, check out his ReverbNation page http://www.reverbnation.com/kojorhyme and follow him on Twitter and soundcloud as @KojoRhyme