M.anifest

M.anifest took both the rapper and hip hop song prizes at the Ghana Music Awards twice, in 2013 and again in 2017, and in 2015 The Guardian called him the foremost rapper on the continent. He is a grandson of the composer and ethnomusicologist J. H. Kwabena Nketia.

Family and schooling

Kwame Ametepee Tsikata was born on 20 November 1982, the son of lawyer and academic Tsatsu Tsikata and Rev. Dr Priscilla Naana Nketia. At SOS-Hermann Gmeiner International College in Tema he was entertainment prefect. In 2001 he went to Macalester College in Minnesota, graduating in economics in 2005, and he divides his time between Madina in Accra and Minneapolis.

Music

Money from a Pepsi radio jingle paid for his first album, Manifestations (2007), which won him songwriter of the year from Minneapolis's City Pages. In 2009 he gave away The Birds and the Beats to raise money for Young Entrepreneurs Africa. Touring with Africa Express in 2010 brought him to Damon Albarn's attention, and he appears on five songs of Rocket Juice and the Moon alongside Albarn, Flea and Tony Allen. He has also worked with Erykah Badu. His song "Someway Bi" came third in the 2015 International Songwriting Competition.