An African [at] New York Fashion Week

Cab Driver: You sure you guys want to go to Queens?! A couple of rich fellas like you should be in Manhattan.
Akeem: No, I want Queens; we're not rich, we're ordinary African students. 

Despite the insane number of times I watched Coming to America, I still haven't really figured out who those two guys were. I always thought the crown prince was Eddie Murphy acting as himself. He was not African like me; Hell No! He had a girl bark like an angry little terrier. 

The story was really a comedy sketch by Eddie Murphy about Africans in New York, which brought to life grossed a hundred million at the box office. Hooray for Eddie! I digress. What I do remember liking is style that made Coming to America worth watching. The elaborate leopard fur hats of President Mobutu brought the thing home for us, helping us relate with the plot.  

I have a feeling Blitz the Ambassador was more taken up by the fact that Africans were wearing fur coats, gold chains and robes. Not for me. 

These two guys are immortalized on the cover of the new single by Blitz the Ambassador. While Eddie Murphy is probably still secretly chuckling at obscenely rich Africans lost in New York, we know all too well that even Mobutu's children (Kabila,current D.R.C President) were ordinary looking kids at Makerere University. 

So ... it's a bit of a fantasy, really. Rapping about Louis Vuitton is not unusual in Hip Hop either, therefore I tend to think what truly inspired the track, "African in New York" is a reductive view of Africans at Fashion Week. 

but when it comes to style, we fly as can be africans at new york fashion week

That being said, the music is fly as can be. As in when it comes to music, we fly as can be kind of fly. Coming from Ghana, this rapper is forever bonded to Ghana's signature highlife ... the likes of "Sweet Mother, I'll never forget you" by Prince Nico Mbarga from 1977. This homie is taking it back in time and giving props where due. 

You can tell that he's listened to much highlife and Afro pop (Fela Kuti, King Sunny Adé, Prince Nico Mbarga, Manu Dibango) when you hear the serious mixture of conga drums, jazz horn sections, rhythmic bass and that spiny up-and-down electric guitar you don't know if you should Decalé, Ndombolo, Kwasa Kwasa, Bakisimba or Kitagururo. 

Critical bias: 

The shout out to Africans by Jay-Z is a plus, as well as is the rapper's interpolation of Shinehead's 'Jamaican in New York'. 

Misgivings: 

- Ndombolo is not a dance I can return to in my free time; Coming to America is about exactly that; and the horns sound too generic and nothing like the original 1970s Afro pop arrangements.