High off the spirit of the Pan African Space Station (PASS) Music Festival in Cape Town, South Africa a few weeks back, AfriPOP! met Ghanaian/Romanian, Hip-life/Hip-hop artist Wanlov the Kubolor, aka the crowned prince of pidgen music.  He was one of the performers at PASS, a month-long music intervention dedicated to exploring new musical territory by bringing genre-busting African musicians to the Mother City. This annual festival’s concept of disruption lent itself to everything from the acts that are invited to play right down to the chosen venues – particularly the re-appropriation of spaces like St Georges Cathedral and The Slave Church.

What stood out about PASS for you?

The mix of artists! To meet [Mali’s Kora legend] Toumani Diabate. I’ve watched him perform, and toured with his nephew but now, to actually meet him in person was special for me. Meeting Toumani is far more important than meeting Obama, or the president of Ghana. It can’t get better than this. And also the concept has a kind of exclusivity, a ‘collector’s items’ feel. If you know about it or if you are curious, you’ll find it. It influences people to be inquisitive.

What was it like to play in venues like the Slave Church?

I haven’t been to a church in more than a decade. To play in those kinds of venues was mind blowing. Actually, being in church with Bheki Khosa, who performed the War Chorale, and watching Toumani was the most inspirational, spiritually uplifting moment I have had in a church, really.

What have been your impressions of Cape Town?

There’s a racist guy at a music store called Mr. Music. And when you walk in the store, you can tell there’s a bad energy because the store feels old but not in an antique way, old in a ghost town, Apartheid way.  As soon as you walk in there, he asks:  “What do you want?” and then rushes you out. That was interesting, but we like this kind of thing.  When we realized he wasn’t comfortable with us, we stayed there as long as we felt like it, just to piss him off.  [Laughs]

Yesterday we were taking pictures in front of this place Mama Africa when we noticed only Europeans walked in there. After a bunch of them walked in the waiters came outside, looked at us and they closed the door and locked it. This was very strange to me. In those two instances it felt like what it was like when I lived in Vicksburg and Port Gibson in Mississippi.

You lived in Vicksburg, Mississippi?

There was a studio in Vicksburg that belonged to my friend Gilby Blackmore from Ghana. The label was Slang Game Entertainment and I was in a hip hop duo called Rapskallyonz with Gibril da Afrikan. So I was living there for some months to record an album Illegal Immigrantz. We never released it. Gibril da Afrikan did a song called The Streets featuring M1 of Dead Prez.

Where does the name Wanlov come from, and what does Kubolor mean?

Listening to rappers, musicians in the States, everybody used to say “one love” but I always saw that the context, even when Talib Kweli or somebody like that was saying it, felt reggae or rasta-oriented because Bob Marley had made it so popular. Since it’s a greeting someone will always be mentioning my name in some kind of egocentric way.

When I was younger, they used to call me Kubolor because I’d always leave the house without my shoes, climbing trees, catching birds, trap fishes in the gutters. – We were always out in the bush. And after opening for Blay Ambolley in LA (A Ghanaian musician who started rapping in the 70’s – he could very well have influenced rap music), some guys came up to me and said ‘You are kubolor.’ So it just stuck. To me, a kubolor is a free spirit.

You mentioned that you are Romanian-born, how does this Romanian Heritage influence your music?

I realized I was denying a total humanity from myself, in a way. I used to put on this fake American accent and it took me a while to realize that these guys talk and behave like where they are from: their own neighborhoods. They aren’t putting on a persona. So what is my persona when I communicate with my friends from where I am? When I came to that realization, is when I recorded my first album, Green Card.

[On this album] I had just found myself, which was a big step … to be able to use my own voice, and my own and unique presence. The next album is going to show more of the Romanian influences and will have some more Romanian lyrics and gypsy sounds. It’s part of my own evolution.

What is Hip Life Music?

Hip hop, jazz, funk or some kind of hard-hitting drums over West African samples. Basically that’s where high life and hip hop meet. Over the years hip life has changed. Now you have fully computerized beats – sounding like kwaito. [South African popular music] with an artist rapping in a Ghanaian language over in it.

Are you a hip-life artist?

I do collaborations where I will rap on a beat like that with other artists, but I would also do the odd West African sample over a drum break. I do hip-life and the other thing is something else. I would call it Afropop.

You lived in the States for 7 years. How did this influence your album Green Card?

Everyone in Ghana thinks that if you move out of the country everything will be alright. The grass isn’t greener on the other side. You need to water your lawn.  I wanted to be like Snoop Dogg and have all the women [laughs]. I didn’t know how to harness it in my own way. The swagger. That’s what I was looking for.

Colonialism destroyed our swagger. They made it look primitive or inferior. We had lost it or weren’t encouraged as youth to find or to use our swagger.

It’s taken me a while to realize that I had my own swagger all along.  I found my humanity in there, because when I got closer to these hip hop guys, I realized these guys are just behaving like they would at home. Then I had to do a lot of reprogramming in my mind.