Ayisi’s The Unbroken: Long promised album thick with purpose

8 Aug 2022 - 16:35

It is, perhaps, hardly your fault that you have never heard of Ghana’s Ayisi until this article. The man, heaving with astonishing sonic panache, would rather keep to himself, stirring up a rebellious and enigmatic air around him.

Ayisi.

When he decides to turn in his long promised debut solo album The Unbroken, he opts for ‘Antiso’, which points wholly to his introverted personality, as focus track.

Listen to the album, which follows 2018’s Headstrong EP, and 2019’s The Linkop, another mid-length project with rapper E.L, and Ayisi’s stature as a leader of Ghana’s hiplife revival holds true. For the uninitiated, hiplife is a local urban sound founded in the early 90s’ combining thumping boom bap traditions with highlife.

And so, The Unbroken transpires as quintessential homage by one of the genre’s most ardent modern scholars; a hearty time capsule paved with spry rhythms that drive a dance fest.

Ayisi is very much in touch with the music that constitutes the country’s pop foundations. Indeed, to understand both the history and future of Ghanaian pop, listen to Ayisi.

The songs on The Unbroken find their author, a linguistic wizard, fluently rattling street axioms and proverbs, the oil with which highlife is consumed. His songwriting is uncompromisingly forthright; insisting on his black cigarette lighter and artistic independence, which is the beating heart of the album's narrative. He also wastes no time in flipping the industry off, if it dares compromise his creative integrity.

Ayisi, who is most popular for his singles ‘Anger Management’ (2014) and ‘Grind’ (2016), tends to overthink, thus overachieves. There’s a seasoned quality and hair-raising cleverness about his samples and references, which range from Tupac to Nana Agyeman. His harmonies are fuller, his ad-libs ring deeper, and a fierce passion lines his every verse, which drags pleasantly on the beats.

The album, despite being too long at 19 songs, features a slim guest list comprising Pure Akan, Efya, Obrafour and Prince Bright, and comes thick with purpose and bold sonic ideology from a man who also fancies himself as “a god in the midst of men”.

By harking back to sounds from decades past, Ayisi is, somehow, also ahead of his time.

Stream The Unbroken here.