Smokey
Location:
Serekunda, Gambia
Biography:
Batch Samba Gaye aka Smokey or Smoke Doctor is from Serekunda, Gambia. After his high school at Saint Augustine’s High he went to Canada to study BBa at the University of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He later moved to Toronto where he started hitting freestyle sessions in downtown Toronto where he hooked up with some local rappers and started a clique called the Five Pointaz.
They made a couple of songs together and Smokey later opened his own record label called Down Home Records. Smokey has now come back home to record his debut solo album, which is to be released on May 7th 2007. Back home he has setup a network called La Cosa Nostra with some Gambian rappers and have released a a compilation called ‘get familiar vol1’ which is already out on Gambian streets.
Review:
The African revolution is upon us. As rapper and ghetto spokesman, Smokey represents his country with such uncompromising honesty, that he is steadily becoming a force to be reckoned with. With tracks including Ghetto Noir, Blackashine and S.M.O.+Key, he is an artist that defines himself within his social context, an artist that expresses both himself and his roots simultaneously, and he is definitely doing it big. The political undercurrents and intelligence inherent in the majority of these tracks puts most bling-obsessed US hip hop in the shade. Funky, illuminating and smart – as an insight to a world beneath the headlines.
BBC Review of Afrolution Vol. 1 Defining the music of an entire continent must be a pretty thankless task. That said, the compilers of Afrolution Vol 1 have made a fine stab at it, showcasing the diversity of hip hop currently being made in countries as far afield as Nigeria, Senegal and Malawi.
Split roughly into Francophone and Anglophone nations, the sheer variety of music demonstrates the versatality whichhas made the genre such aglobal phenomenon. Highlights include the South African crew Cashless Society and their extraordinary “Taxi Wars” – in which a skittering bass drives the track ever onwards, while the rapper manages to rhyme ‘pyramid schemes’ with ‘geen wrapped in banana pills for 50 beans’. “Mjanja”, by Kenyas Wawesh, is also worthy of mention, as is Begotten Sun’s Gil Scott-Heron-sampling “Revolution” (from Zimbabwe) and “Ghetto Noir” by Smokey (from Gambia).
Links:
MySpace - http:///smokeyakasmokedoctor