The year was 2001. I had just come home for the second term holidays and the first thing my mum asked me to do was to get a haircut the very next day. At the barber’s, a young guy with a wooden shed for a barbershop at Terminus Bonamoussadi, I noticed a poster on a wall. The same poster that is attached to this article. It seemed to be that of a Cameroonian rap group. The clothes and the poses of the three guys in the poster seem to point in that direction.
I read the name of the group. Bantou Po-Si. What an odd name for a rap group- I told myself. I scoffed it off, telling myself they were not serious. The hip-hop scene in Cameroon was beginning to emerge. My brother was heavily invested in rap at the time and he kept me abreast of who was hot in Douala. At that time there were people like Big Bizy and VBH. Better rap names, I told myself. Not these guys whom I thought were just clowns that weren’t even wearing bandanas and throwback jerseys like Big Bizzy and VBH.
Boy was I wrong!
I always like to say that before there was X-Maleya, there was Bantou Po-Si.
Pour la petite histoire, the group was started in 1993 by Feros Mamluck and Tony Nobody. Yes… THE Tony Nobody. A year later, a rapper, Guchi, joined the group. It was towards the end of 1994 that Final D joined the group.
In 1998, Tony Nobody left the group and the three others stayed until they came to national prominence in 2001 with their first single entitled ‘Nikeles’. For context, Feros is the one who sings in raga-dancehall style while Guchi is the rapper guy. Final D is who most people recognise as the lead singer of the trio.
Pour l’autre petite histoire, their very first album “Charabia” was produced by Tom Yoms.
I remember when their first single ‘Nikeles’ would come on during school socials. Everyone went wild, leaping off their sits and landing on the dancefloor. And we would all dance whilst singing along in an approximate Bassa to the best of our abilities.
That song was so popular that they have gone down in history as the first hip-hop/urban act to secure a major endorsement deal from a multinational. Yep! Before Stanley Enow and Made of Black, the Bantou Po-Si guys were featured in a Guinness TV and outdoor advertisement campaign. This was long before social media.
I went back today to listen to their songs and I am struck by how many memories flood into my mind. The nostalgia is strong and I can almost feel the exact emotions and I feel transported in a time/space continuum, back to the very moments I heard that song for the first time. I remember exactly the moment I heard it blasting from the speakers of a guy who had a CD shop not too far from our house. Those were simpler times when there wasn’t so much music content around and accessibility was limited to a cassette tape or a CD. When you got a piece of music you ACTUALLY listened to it.
And the more I listened to it, the more I realised how far ahead of their time Bantou Po-Si were. The music they made back then would very, very easily fit into the Afropop genre today. You may argue that the sound is slightly different but if Nikeles were released today, there is no way it won’t be a number one hit at least in the whole of Central Africa.
"Jameyi," another song from that album would swallow 90% of the hit songs in Cameroon that came out in the last two years. I’m very certain about that. If you don’t believe me, go to YTube and listen for yourself.
Another facet of their music which most of the mainstream crowd at the time didn’t take much notice of is the depth of the lyrics of Guchi, the rapper. I mean, the themes and the subjects he approached in the songs were of deep philosophical significance and timelessness. When you listen to his technique, his rhyming, and his delivery, you see the authenticity and the true spirit of rap music. Take the song ‘Jameyi’ for example…
Lorsque le sens réfléchi de l’homme s’accroit/ Par des choses réticentes qui l’on rendu sournois / L’au delà une sorte de phosphatine/ Moi mon esprit subtil trouve utile/ De ne point se taire devant ces sous-jacentes critiques/ A lak ma dont la problématique, harcèle mes lyrics Pour atteindre l’homme car l’homme déteste l’homme/ L’homme sonde l’homme dans les pénombres les plus sombres de la honte.
For my people across the Moungo, he is saying that when the mind of man begins to fill itself with things that make him sneaky and devious, reflecting about things that define his existence become as worthless to him as baby food (phosphatine). He, the rapper, doesn’t feel comfortable to not call out this behaviour even in the face of criticism. That’s why you would hear him rap about these things because man is to man a wolf, and society has made man to look always at what is the darkest part of other men so as to find excuses for they themselves to be sneaky.
I mean… it’s not so much about the theme, it’s also the poetry in how he writes this. And this was written on a song that can be played at nightclubs! We don’t get lyrics like this today. We just don’t.
I understand too that these are guys who were influenced by French rappers from the very early 90s. From a socially conscious point of view, French rap at that time was at its peak. Basically, every French rap song released at that time was a political and social statement. And people like Guchi were influenced by that.
All that to say we have a lot to thank Bantou Po-Si for as far as their contribution to the music industry is concerned in the urban music category.
. - Wandji Wilfred.