The Ghanaian hip-hop artist draws from sexy drill, zouk, kompa and highlife for an album that is ambitious about what contemporary highlife music can sound like.
Nelson C.J.NelsonC.J.Lagos-Based West Africa Correspondent
“I always seem to get stuck in the past” - Joey B.by Darryl Rennie | Courtesy of Rain labs
The story of Sexy Highlife — Joey B’s third album and a sensual reimagining of Ghanaian highlife music — begins in New York City. It is the first city (Brooklyn, to be precise) in the United States where the Ghanaian hip-hop artist ever felt completely at home. It is also the first place he encountered Sexy Drill - a subgenre of drill music popularised by rapper Cash Cobain. Joey found Sexy Drill at the same time as he was experiencing New York as a multicultural site for unending inspiration, especially for Sexy Highlife, which draws inspiration from Sexy Drill.
“There was a whole wave like a serious wave of sexy drill,” Joey tells OkayAfrica over a virtual call two days after Sexy Highlife’s release. “It was literally everywhere. I started listening to it, then came back to Ghana and started working on [a single] “Princess”, which is also on the album. And then it took off.”
“Princess” is the 9th song on Sexy Highlife. The album that mirrors the sensual and sex obsessed sensibilities of Sexy Drill, a genre often praised for being less violence-focused than pure drill and for encouraging plain speaking with themes of desire and sex. Joey’s genius with this project is not simply in decoding why sexy drill is so appealing, it’s in his willingness to reimagine it through a genre he knows best, highlife. As he puts it, “highlife has always been sexy.”
Joey B began making Sexy Highlife after the positive reception “Princess” was getting. “A friend of mine hit me and said, "Yo, this is crazy. make a body of work with this because this motion is crazy,” he explains. “Sexy highlife is so New York inspired, and I just thought I'll also mix our contemporary high life with hip-hop, like with Bisa Kdei.”
The project leans heavily on nostalgia, borrowing influences from Ghanaian 2000s rap with elements from his childhood growing up in Ghana. In many ways, Sexy Highlife feels modern in its lyricism, its sleek productions and nod to New York, but it is firmly defined by varying degrees of cultural codes specific to the Ghanaian experience. In this way, Joey B not only made a project that rethinks what contemporary highlife sounds like, but he also houses it in a sensibility that is older, more traditional and intensely wistful.
At peace with the past
Joey B (born Darryl Paa Bannerman-Martin) is a student of nostalgia. His childhood, filled with music, television shows and different mediums of cultural education, is one he returns to very often. “My favorite childhood memory is my dad coming to pick me up from school, and I think he must have fixed some amplifiers underneath his car seat. He would play Tupac, R&B or zouk in the car. That was very crazy to me. I still remember literally all the songs he would play.”
“I really want to push the envelope and make that type of sound, without making people bored and people who know it will get it.” - Joey B.by Kelvin Buckman | Courtesy of Rain labs.
Perhaps the best way that cultural education has transformed him is in his wide and global taste as an artist.
“I am all for moving forward, but I always seem to get stuck in the past,” he explains. “It's just this feeling I get when I remember the music my dad played, like all of that. Our Ghanaian channels. I don't know what was happening when I was very little, but Ghanaians were in this phase of enjoying a francophone type of sound.”
His work, as he explains, is in constant conversation with the past. In “Exposa,” the third track featuring Nigerian alt singer Odunsi, he wanted to explore the zouk music he grew up watching on Ghanaian music stations. The song is a nod to “Muchana (Zouk Love)” by Congolese artist Kanda Bongo Man, complete with the even-tempered energy and a breezy-paced beat common with zouk music. In it, Joey B’s running consciousness style rap, where he talks about fetishes and being at the gym at six, gives the track an easygoing yet unforgettable element. The video for the track is styled and colored like an old Ghanaian hip-hop music video.
“I really want to push the envelope and make that type of sound, without making people bored and people who know it will get it.”
Throughout Sexy Highlife, Joey B makes a case for why he considers highlife music sexy. The opening track “Sexy, Hi” is the voice of a woman declaring her love for highlife music, describing the genre as sexy as the guitar riffs in the background, before segueing seamlessly into the next track “Montecarlo.” The album flows gently. The tracks feel spacious, Joey’s rap delivered at an unhurried pace, similar to the composition in traditional highlife music. Also similar to traditional highlife are little guitar breaks and a sharp storytelling element that runs throughout the story.
Thematically, Joey B combines raunchy lyrics with clever innuendos. His concerns here are lighthearted: desire, sex, expensive living, and uncomplicated entanglements. On this project, Joey B is a free-spirited, confident lead, to whom everything comes easy, and life feels plush and tender. And in many ways, he wants you to be that, too.
Keeping it experimental
“Highlife is already sexy. I'm just emphasizing how sexy it is.” - Joey B.by Kelvin Buckman | Courtesy of Rain labs.
As an artist, Joey B is always open to surprising himself. The sonic composition of his debut album, Darryl, is nothing like the psychedelic, trap, hip-hop sensibilities of his second Lava Feels. Both albums are nothing like Sexy Highlife either. What remains consistent throughout those projects and this new one is that he is never sure how his fans will receive the music, but he is willing to try anyway.
“I honestly didn't think people would love it this much, to be honest,” he admits. “You know, when you're experimental, it takes a while for people to fully embrace what you've put out. I don't know if it's just the fact that they love what they're hearing, or if they're just a cult. But all in all, I'm grateful.”
If he has concerns about whether the album is truly highlife or deeply Ghanian, owing to its influences, Joey says there is none. “Highlife is already sexy. I'm just emphasizing how sexy it is,” he explains. “Because of the instrumentation, the groove, the way they were dancing to it. It's just really chill. I just, you know, infused what Tash Cobain had created in New York and just brought it to Africa just to emphasise what he has done but also emphasise what sexy highlife is.”
Sexy Highlife is a short album, and according to Joey, this is by design. “I like people to feel like, ‘where's the rest?’ In this day and age, the attention span is very short; people don't really go into it unless you play with them just a little for them to feel like no I want more. I try as much as possible to make you love the creation, but want more from it.”
