Vice Verse All Stars

Band member Omni-Blaize

The urban hip-hop group Vice Verse All Stars from New York arrived in Kinshasa on Wednesday, March 4 for the final leg of a tour of  West and Central Africa which began on February 7.   During  their five-day stay, the group teamed up with local Congolese rap artists to give four concerts to reach a cross-section of Congolese audiences.  Their rousing performances, from a concert hall in the city to an outdoor concert in a popular neighborhood generated enthousiasm for the new rhythmic urban music genre and highlighted common and contrasting social themes in the development of hip hop culture.  Vice Verse held a series of workshops with local rap artists and journalists, where they explained the origins of rap/hip hop in New York as a protest against social conditions to its development into more complex musical forms.  They also addressed the controversies the hip hop culture has generated. The discussions and interviews with local media included an examination of how rap music has been absorbed locally and fused with Congolese traditional music where it has generated a variety of hip hop sounds and has come to represent the empowerment of the disenfranchised and an outlet for social aspirations