AGORO
Photo: Louis Treffel
Agoro (“crew” in twi dialect) is a collaborative hip-hop project, gathering French rappers Lobo EL and Cotchei, Ghanaian MC’s Kwame Mulzz, Lil Fyve, Khofi Koojan, and an alternative formation of NCY Milky Band with Achille Landois (vecteur0) on the doublebass.
It all started in 2018 when Lobo EL came for an open mic session in Ghent, Belgium and met MC Kwame Mulzz who lives there. They quickly became friends and started recording a few tracks together. Used to travel with his home studio in his backpack (his project is called “Everywhere is a studio”), Kwame came several times to Nancy, France, and met Lobo’s rap partner Cotchei.
A solid friendship settled between the three rappers and Kwame took them to Ghana’s second biggest city, Kumasi, where a flourishing hip-hop scene resonates country-wide, that Khofi Koojan and Lil Fyve are active parts of.
Kumasi MC’s mix English and Twi languages in their lyrics, and are generally very influenced by the US, so much that they started getting criticism in other cities like Ghana’s capital Accra, giving birth to the term Kumerica. Kumericans take pride in this influence and celebrate multicultural music with their unique blend of drill and afrobeats called afro-drill, made popular by local phenomenon Black Sherif.
Back in Nancy, Lobo and Cotchei invited Kwame to the BMM Land studio where he met Louis Treffel and his cosmic jazz quartet NCY Milky Band. From this collaboration emerged the Agoro project and their first single ‘No Bullshit’, gathering five MCs rapping in three different languages and four musicians in one video with visuals by Pol Bourdellon.
RELEASES
VIDEOS
SURVIVAL
After Agoro’s first ever tour in France, gathering the NCY Milky Band and 5 rappers from Ghana, Belgium and France, the hip-hop supergroup doesn’t stop here. This song features Khofi Koojan, who raps in English and Twi about not giving up despite the tough times he has encountered as a hustler in the streets of Kumasi.
The young rising star from Ghana’s Afro Drill scene is backed with some French incisive verse from Nancy-based world freestyle champion Lobo EL. The instrumental was composed by bassist Achille Landois then arranged, recorded and processed as a sample by NCY Milky Band.
BLACK STAR
In this new track that blurs the lines between rap, rock and electronic music, Franco-Ghanaian hip-hop supergroup Agoro let the mic to Kwame Mulzz, who delivers his full singer potential. His lyrics tell the story of a black star who struggles to shine in the darkness of space. This is a poetic reference to the Lodestar of African Freedom, an important symbol of Pan-Africanism and anti-colonialist culture, that was added to the Ghanaian flag to symbolise African unity and freedom.
NO BULLSHIT
Agoro (“crew” in twi dialect) is a collaborative hip-hop project, gathering French rappers Lobo EL and Cotchei, Ghanaian MC’s Kwame Mulzz, Lil Fyve, Khofi Koojan, and an alternative formation of NCY Milky Band with Achille Landois (vecteur0) on the doublebass.