SNACK Magazine: December 2021 – Issue 34

KOBI ONYAME We caught up with critically acclaimed Ghanaian hip hop and afrobeats artist Kobi Onyame (Kwame Barfour-Osei), a longtime resident of Scotland who is currently based in South Africa, about his upcoming fifth and final album, Don’t Drink the Poison.

You wrote and recorded Don’t Drink the Poison under not just the circumstances of an international pandemic, but also while becoming a husband and a father. How did these affect the process of creating DDTP? I mean how did it not, bro? I can only write or produce an album when I have something to say. The pandemic gave me time to just stay at home and think. I became deeper in my thoughts. I think the state of the world has become more obvious to us. All of that influenced my writing. I changed the album twice. I started recording in the summer of 2019. I changed direction in March 2020, because at that point, I realised, no: I’ve got a lot to say. It's social commentary based on who I am as a person, through my viewpoint, through my lens.

On this project you worked with some notable artists from the African continent, not limited to Worlasi from Ghana and SheSaidSo from South Africa. How did all these collaborations from thousands of miles away come about?

I’ve always been inspired by and tried to develop relationships with artists from all around the world. Being Ghanian, I have a very close relationship with the country, which brought about the collaboration with Worlasi. George Kalakusha, who is on the track ‘Malawi’, I met when I was playing the Lagos Stars festival in Malawi in 2018! snackmag.co.uk