Bosom P-Yung - 'I am on a mission to change African sound'

Everyone is talking about Bosom P-Yung. The young Ghanaian rapper burst onto the scene last year with his breakout, break-up track ‘Attaa Adwoa’. With his dyed pink hair and playful raps that flipped between Twi and English over spare electronic beats, no-one looked like him or sounded like him. The University of Ghana graduate has gone on to become one of the country’s hottest stars. In an exclusive interview, he talks to FLYafrica about how he came up with his signature ‘trad trap’ sound and why being true to himself has helped him stand out in a world saturated by music.

If you are a music fan, chances are you have not forgotten the first time you saw the video for ‘Attaa Adwoa’, the debut single by Bosom P-Yung. In it, the Berekum-born P-Yung stands in a bare studio, its four walls coloured as bright a shade of pink as the singer’s dyed hair. The scene has a cartoon-like quality, further embellished by P-Yung’s oversized sunglasses, manic facial expressions and his goofy dance moves triggered by the lullaby-sweet beginnings of the track. Soon synthesised beats break in and P-Yung is rapping like a man possessed, his rapid-fire verses occasionally taking flight into auto-tuned falsetto. However, amid the confident, strutting performance, it soon begins clear that P-Yung is detailing a painful break-up and his ragged delivery of the line “you are killing me” arrives in shocking counterpoint to the early swagger. This combination of showmanship and vulnerability is a rare quality. Anyone who has seen it, knows they have witnessed the arrival of a very special talent.

P-Yung seems as equally aware of his unique qualities. He admits to an element of calculation in creating a brand designed to stand out among the glut of musical releases, but also believes his singular style is very much a reflection of who he is.

Be yourself

“I was breaking into a saturated industry at that time,” he tells me. “There was the need to standout and be different from what everyone else was doing. At the same time, your music has to reflect you. It’s important to talk about yourself, where you from and what is happening around you. Bob Marley, Tupac and Daddy Lumba did the same and also created new sounds and they became music legends.”

Those are grand comparisons, but P-Yung has already shown enough evidence to prove his quirkiness is more than a gimmick and that he is a prolific talent pursuing his own musical path. ‘Attaa Adwoa’ was soon followed with more hits lifted from his love-lorn debut album, ‘Awiesu’ (the title translates as ‘done crying’), and before 2020 was over he had released a second album, ‘Acheampong Boys’, full of collaborations with Ghanaian acts keen to attach themselves to P-Yung’s rising star. The title track features another emerging artist, Kumasi drill rapper Kweku Smoke, while Kwesi Arthur, on album opener ‘Adabi’, and Joey B on hit ‘Bang’ are among the other guest stars. P-Yung also has a famous fan in Ghanaian rap royalty Sarkodie, who was among the first to spread the online love for ‘Attaa Adwoa’ and the pair teamed up on Kofi Mole’s track ‘Makoma’.

Such a roll-call of willing contributors is evidence that P-Yung is bringing something unique to Ghanaian music. Amid the country’s party soundtrack of Afrobeats and hiplife,his stripped down, concisely crafted tracks – check out new single ‘Don’t Trust’, which clocks in at under two minutes, but still manages to provide a wildly exhilarating mission statement of independence – owe more to the ‘trap’ subgenre of hip hop begun in the southern states of the US. P-Yung has even coined a new genre, for his music, ‘trad-trap’, reflecting the way he weaves English and Twi expressions in his raps.

“The traditional element I bring is basically my native tongue,” he says. “I make sure I use it majorly in my music and the stories I tell. It’s also there in my choice of instruments, rhythms and the traditional way of singing.”

IN THE PINK

The rapper has a distinctive look

There was a need to stand out and be different from what everyone else was doing. At the same time your music has to reflect you

Influences

While P-Yung namechecks highlife and hiplife doyens such as Okomfour Kwadee, Daddy Lumba, Mugeez, Kwadwo Antwi, Efya and Tony Tequila as influences on his sound, he wants to put his own stamp on the music of the continent.

“I arrived on a mission to change African sound,” he says. “To add a flavour to African music and shape the people of today for tomorrow.” While P-Yung may appear to have burst onto the scene fully formed at the start of 2020, he says there was “a whole lotta process” in preparing himself for that moment. For much of his time growing up in the Bono Region and attending the Kumasi Anglican Secondary School, P-Yung describes himself as just a “nerdy young guy”, but music struck something in him. “Once I got my first Walkman I fell in love,” he says. He moved to the capital to study political science at the University of Ghana and, in 2019, with his graduation day approaching, he began to seriously think about a career in music. “Once university was over, I knew I had to start something and I believed I had a message to preach out there,” he says. Soon the sound and persona of Bosom P-Yung took shape.

He preferred to work alone on his music, believing it helped him sharpen his own voice. “I always felt comfortable creating alone because this music must talk about where I am from. Being alone is like thinking out loud and then putting that inside the music. I always start my songs from scratch alone and my teams take it from there. My songs are both fictions and non-fictions. I try to capture what others have been through and what probably I might go through.”

Dyeing young

At this time he also started dyeing his hair, a move in part inspired by his favourite footballer growing up, Bernard Dong-Bortey, who stood out on the pitch for his peroxide blonde hair as well as his skills on the wing. He also gave himself a new name, Bosom P-Yung. There may be another cheeky reason for the stage moniker that he is keeping close to his chest, as it were, but he says the name was inspired by the Bible. “I love to read and I read the Bible a lot,” he says. “I discovered that in Genesis 1:27 it says ‘God created mankind in his own image’. Meaning he created us as gods too and the meaning of a lesser god in Twi is Bosom.” It is quite an image created and the music is just as singular. With future projects including collaborations with Jamaican DJ Popcaan, Ghanaian singer-songwriter Efya and British rapper Kojo Funds, the shockwaves of his arrival on the scene are going to be felt for some time to come.