On the 2024 Hennessy Africa Cypher, Sarkodie rapped about his friends being “locked in cages.” He was not being metaphorical. He was describing what he had watched happen to African artists who signed to major record labels and discovered, after the contract was in place, what they had actually agreed to.
The verse landed across the continent. A music executive felt compelled to respond to it in the press. That a two-minute rap verse could generate an industry counter-argument is a measure of how precisely it hit.
Sarkodie has been making this argument, in music and in interviews, for over fifteen years. African rap is now beginning to catch up to it.
How He Started
Michael Owusu Addo built his early reputation through Adom FM’s Kasahare Level, a rap competition on one of Ghana’s most listened-to radio stations. It is where he met Duncan Williams of Duncwills Entertainment, who became his manager. He was unsigned, competing for radio time, and already winning.
He has spoken openly about what came next: he wanted a record deal. He pursued one. He was passed over, repeatedly, by labels local and international. He has described becoming “used to” the rejection over time, not as defeat but as a gradual recalibration of what he was building toward.
What he was building toward, it turned out, was ownership.
Sarkcess Music
In 2014, Sarkodie founded Sarkcess Music. He did not announce it as a statement of principle. He built a label because building one was the logical outcome of spending years watching how the music industry treats artists who do not own their infrastructure.
In March 2016, the label signed singer Akwaboah. In 2017, rapper Strongman joined. Strongman’s contract expired in April 2019, and he left to found his own label, Strong Empire. Sarkodie has noted publicly, as recently as 2023, that he still pays artists who left the label, reflecting ongoing royalty arrangements from their time together.
The label has never chased volume. It has been Sarkodie’s mechanism for controlling what gets released under his name, how it gets released, and who benefits from it financially. In a continent where major label deals regularly involve an artist signing away publishing rights they do not fully understand, that control is not a small thing.
The Verse That Started a Public Debate
The 2024 Hennessy Cypher featured Sarkodie alongside Ivory Coast’s Didi B, Tanzania’s Young Lunya, Kenya’s Khaligraph Jones, Nigeria’s LadiPoe, and South Africa’s Maglera Doe Boy. His verse was the one that extended beyond the cypher.
He described labels acting as gatekeepers for collaborations, taking cuts from publishing rights, and presenting deals to artists who have already struggled for years in a way that makes the terms feel unavoidable. “I want my freedom cos most my homies are locked in cages,” he rapped, articulating a frustration shared by artists across the continent who have found themselves in restrictive contracts after gaining enough momentum to be commercially interesting to labels.
George Britton, a music executive, published a response arguing that both labels and artists can face exploitation and that well-structured contracts protect both parties. The fact that the verse required an executive rebuttal confirmed the accuracy of the point it was making.
What the Numbers Reflect
Sarkodie’s Spotify profile reflects 380 million streams accumulated across a career built without a major label distribution deal of the kind that inflates those numbers for artists who sign to global majors. He has done it through Sarkcess Music, through distribution partnerships that he controls, and through a catalogue that has remained relevant across multiple shifts in Ghanaian and African music.
He is not the most-streamed Ghanaian artist. That position belongs to a younger generation that grew up in a streaming era. But the 380 million is his, in a way that is straightforward and unencumbered, and that distinction matters to him.
Why Africa Is Listening Now
The Hennessy verse arrived at a specific moment. Across the continent, artists who signed to major labels during the Afrobeats boom years are beginning to discover what those contracts actually contain. Publishing rights claimed. Collaboration approvals required from the label. Creative direction subject to commercial considerations that do not always align with the artist’s judgment.
Sarkodie has been describing this dynamic for over a decade, from a position of having avoided it by choice and by the circumstance of early rejection that became, in retrospect, a gift. African rappers who are now inside those systems and looking for a way to articulate what they are experiencing found it in a two-minute verse on a cognac brand’s annual platform.
He did not discover independence because of a philosophy. He discovered it because no one would sign him, built something from that reality, and then spent fifteen years demonstrating that the thing he built was the right call. The rest of Africa is paying attention to the demonstration.
More About This Person
Strongman Has Been One of Ghana’s Best Rappers for a Decade. His Bank Account Did Not Always Reflect It.
Ghana vs Nigeria: Why Ghanaian Rappers Keep Getting Continent-Wide Respect But Not the Numbers
Ghana Has Competed in Every Hennessy Cypher Since 2023. It Has Not Lost One Yet.
What Kwesi Arthur’s ‘Redemption Valley’ Era Tells Us About What His Hennessy Verse Will Sound Like
Sarkodie’s Hennessy Verse Made a Music Executive Respond in the Press. No Other African Rapper Has Done That.
