Hennessy Cypher 2026: A Celebration of African Rap’s Global Power

Sponsored: In partnership with Hennessy.

Enny, Tenor, Kwesi Arthur, and Fena Gitu walk down the stairs, dressed to the nines in designer gear, Pantone colors. A wide shot reveals Yanga Chief to Enny's right, while Suspect 95 walks behind Kwesi Arthur. A shot of Sarz stepping up to a stack of speakers interrupts the flow, inducing the unshakeable feeling that something monumental is about to occur. This is African rap, tried and tested in cyphers around the fire for millennia.

Shot in Johannesburg and released on August 7th, Hennessy Cypher 2026 arrives on the platform's fifteenth anniversary. For the first time in the Cypher's run, two Francophone African artists appear on the same edition — Côte d'Ivoire's Suspect 95 and Cameroon's Tenor — alongside Ghana's Kwesi Arthur, Kenya's Fena Gitu, South Africa's Yanga Chief and the British-Nigerian Enny, over a beat from the ever-evolving Nigerian producer Sarz. 

"I dey see dead bodies when I close my eyes," raps Kwesi Arthur, a reference to the film The Sixth Sense by way of The Game's "It's Okay (One Blood)" that might fly over some heads.

"There's only so much one can do in a 16-bar verse on a cypher, but I wanted to share a lot within the short period I knew I had," the decorated emcee tells OkayAfrica. Goma, Sudan, and Nigeria all get a mention — atrocities that confound the soul and plague the mind.

"I feel the world has turned its head away from our people in these areas on the continent where civil war and unrest have made thousands of people lose their lives, millions displaced, and families torn apart. There's hunger in these parts of the world; people are dying of starvation, and it's not talked about enough. Nothing is being done about it," he says.

He also pays homage to the late Daddy Lumba, whose contributions to highlife made him one of the most influential Ghanaian musicians of his generation. The beat by Sarz interpolates Michael Jackson's "Liberian Girl" — the same source Jermaine Dupri looped for MC Lyte's "Keep On, Keepin' On" — and fuses amapiano-leaning log drums into the mix.

"I was challenged by Sarz the most, because of the beat. I had to find pockets within it to share the message I wanted to get across in the best way I could. The beat is a banger within itself," Kwesi Arthur says.

Enny's poetic inclination shines here. "There was trust between you and I / the sign of a cross before a dotted eye," she spits, calm and collected, as though problems run away when they see her. She then follows up with "the devil's in the details, and I'm learning to read well." Sharp, intuitive, ready to fire from the hip at all times.

She tells OkayAfrica: "The only person I'm ever trying to prove anything to is myself. And it was more so performing over a beat I wouldn't traditionally go on."

The baton-passing nature of the cipher qualifies the art as sport. Viewers on the edge become subsumed in a whirlwind of word, sound and power, and it helps when the lyricists themselves are top-tier masters of bars who'll wreck the entire alphabet if it helps them land the rhyme.

Suspect 95 follows Enny, and introduces an oft-ignored component of rap: vocal tone. The sound and texture of it announce themselves before the words unscramble; the curvatures guide you up, down, and sideways, through an immersive tunnel of experiential rap.

The emcee tells OkayAfrica that rap is his "first passion." "Regardless of the evolution of rap today, which tends to move away from the basic codes, I wanted to show that this original rap still deserves to have its place," he says.

Fena Gitu takes the mic like it were a birthright, rapping: “in this economy, oil is too expensive/ I’m loyal to the expenses/ losses, too many/ sorry if I don’t come across as too friendly/ and I get cocky as hell [then] sip Henny.” She knows who she is, and is clear on where she is going. She acknowledges her flaws, but also gives herself props. “I trust in God’s timing, I care deeply about my people, and I’m always praying and working towards better days,” she tells OkayAfrica. 

"We stand on the shoulders of hip-hop giants across the continent, and today we are surrounded by some of the sharpest creators of this generation and the next. This cypher shows that despite our different languages, cultures, sounds and experiences, we are one. And when African hip-hop moves as one, we can only win."

Yanga Chief finesses bars, raises the stakes to another plane, and reminds us why he's one of the greatest writers living and working in African music, irrespective of genre. "From where I'm sitting, it's just looking like the street's a mess / couple young guns that I'm loving, y'all can keep the rest," he raps, wordplay that declares his elder-statesman status while letting us know that he's still got his eyes and ears on the ground. The emcee says that the verse demonstrates the self-belief he's always carried in his style.

"There are seasons in rap where certain styles are the trend, but for me I've always just had my own unique approach. It's allowed me to stay unpredictable. This cypher was an opportunity to share that signature flow with the rest of the continent," he says.

Sarz architected a sonic landscape wide enough to hold accents, languages and ideas of what a bar should do, tight enough that nobody sounds like a guest on somebody else's record. 

"When I was building the beat for Hennessy Cypher, I thought about doing something that's authentically hip-hop but at the same time something that has groove, because I know Africans love groove," he says. "It was just about finding the middle ground of something that's groovy but also rooted in hip-hop." Simplicity is key for the producer, and that's part of the complexity for him.

"Everyone came in with different energy, and my job is to make everyone feel comfortable enough to express themselves. I think I did well with that," he says. "Tenor was very energetic — I remember him just rapping through and everybody was looking like, wow, this guy is crazy, because he did that in one take, which is insane. I love Kwesi's confidence, I love Fena, Yanga Chief and Suspect 95. Yanga Chief is one of my favorites from all of them. It's just something about his flow that's just very calm and swaggy."

The one take makes sense once you know that Tenor is the first Cameroonian artist to appear on the Cypher in its 15 years. He wanted, he says, to "demonstrate respect for the codes of a cypher through my current way of standing out sharply and striking like Samuel Eto'o in his cleats — in other words, letting people know that we are truly present and ready to prove that we are up to the biggest challenges." 

"Selection is never based on momentum alone," says Kelly Kabongo, regional media and digital manager at Moët Hennessy Middle East and Africa. "We look for artists with exceptional lyrical ability, a distinct point of view, and real cultural influence in their own markets and beyond. What matters most is authenticity: voices that are genuinely shaping contemporary music and culture."

"We think carefully about both individual talent and collective chemistry, so the final collaboration feels unexpected, elevated and true to the culture," Kabongo says. 

Fifteen years in, the brief has widened its scope and appeal on the African continent. "That relevance comes from continuing to evolve with the sound of the moment," she says. "Today, that means creating space not only for rap in its purest form, but also for the genres and influences shaping contemporary African music, including Afrobeats and amapiano. The ambition has grown from showcasing talent to building a more expansive cultural platform: one that connects artists, celebrates craft, and brings regional voices to a global audience."