American rap star Dee-1 has recalled coming to West Africa “as a 13-year-old” boy.

According to him, the trip “changed my perspective,” transforming him irrevocably.

On the genesis of that time of his life, he gave a hearty mention to his kindergarten and first-grade teacher Ms Deborah Harley, “a black woman in New Orleans” who “started a non-profit programme” which essentially was “a cultural exchange trip” to Africa.

Ms Harley, Dee-1 explained, would take “these kids from the inner city [of America] and expose them to the motherland and expose them to their roots so they can have a greater appreciation for who they are”.

At the time, he said, popular Black American music had “lyrics about murder, drug dealing, running trains on women and disrespecting women”.

In sharp contrast, however, he fondly remembered he “got to go to Ghana” where he “got to see these amazing, beautiful brothers and sisters who are taking their education seriously, treating their elders and peers with respect, and who are not the slightest bit materialistic”.

The Ghanaians he encountered were not “worried about rims on cars,” and other frivolities. Their priority, rather was “clean water in their village,” he explained.

He stressed “they were not worried about jewelry, Jabot jeans and Reebok tennis shoes, they were worried about having a smile on their face when they wake up in the morning because they are grateful to God that they’re still here”.

Revealing that his stay in Ghana was for only three weeks, he stressed, it “changed me forever”.

Unashamedly Christian in his music and worldview, David ‘Dee-1’ Augustine is a multiple award-winning rapper, author, speaker and college professor, who, since his 2010 hit: Jay, 50 and Weezy, has demonstrated his dedication to transforming Hiphop from the inside out, salvaging it from deviance and violence.

In 2020, he was honoured with a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Power of Influence Award. 

Dee-1, a 2022/2023 Nasir Jones Hip-hop Fellow at Harvard’s Hiphop Archive & Research Institute, spoke to renowned journalist Jason Whitlock.