Show Dem Camp Is Making African Hip-Hop That Will Stand The Test Of Time

Africa’s most inspiring hip-hop duo gets candid about their love for the culture, creative expansion, and stepping into a new era.

“When creating music, we always have our eyes on something that will stand the test of time,” Show Dem Camp rapper Ghost reveals. When we speak, the Nigerian rap duo is six albums, and multiple accolades, deep into their career. Neither Ghost nor Tec have much of anything to prove—they have been rapping circles around their peers for the last decade and are guardians of the alté scene. Still, with each new effort, Show Dem Camp adheres to a strong sense of intention to express their art, culture, skill set and hip-hop perspective.

Looking back, the pieces were always there for SDC to become Africa’s emblematic rap group: the lyrical prowess, hip-hop mentality, and a classic African sound. Their gradual rise, in and of itself, has been very evocative of hip-hop tradition—every step reconciling the hunger of their past with the feasting of their present. 

“I want to be remembered for the level of dedication, consistency, and quality that we put into our art.”

Rise of the underdogs

Show Dem Camp’s grassroots rise is an underground rap fan’s dream: the unfailing story of carving out a niche and prospering. The pair’s relationship stretches back to their uni days in the UK, when the rap hopefuls Wale Davies (Tec) and Olumide Ayeni (Ghost) faced off in a winner-takes-all battle—the results of which they still can’t agree on. Years later, early singles like “Feel Alright”, featuring Boj and a young Ladipoe, were more proof that the spark of their creative reunion was no fluke.

The 2010s saw a steady output of mixtapes and albums—“We’re definitely album artists,” Tec admits. Quietly, SDC were creating a catalog of classics that felt like the perfect response to the question, ‘What should African rap sound like?’ Collaborating with the who’s who of the alté scene, SDC’s profile was steadily rising adjacent to the limelight but never directly in it—but not for lack of talent or exposure. Where they differed from their more visible peers was their choice to sidestep conventional stardom and the inevitable artistic compromise that comes with it. Rather than chasing hits and clout, the rappers were invested in crafting bespoke worlds that suited not just their flow, but their entire style and ethos.

“Our music is just about opening a dimension of what African hip-hop could potentially sound like,” Tec explains over a call. “A lot of times, in Africa, we lean on sounds that come from the West; if it’s the trap era or the drill era, we lean on a lot of those popular sounds. That’s where our influences are from. Show Dem Camp, we’re Nigerian rappers, some of our influences are closer to home. So how do we fuse hip-hop with these influences and create something that sounds like home?”

A perfect pairing, Ghost’s gruff purr and silver-tongued Tec’s styles recall the glories of vintage New York rap without feeling derivative. While their dedication to the hip-hop form remains undiluted, their music is infatuated by the eternal truths  of highlife, Afrobeat and alté—a hybrid they call “Palmwine music.” Throughout their catalog, Ghost and Tec’s reference points suggest a deeper understanding of this dynamic. They rap about bad break-ups and everyday struggles in Lagos with the same linguistic dizziness that others rap about gun-slinging and drugs. At its best, the world SDC creates is colourful and comical, like when they fashioned their 2022 album, Palmwine Music 3, after a fictional radio segment.

“Growing up, we’ve always loved hip-hop because it points to a timestamp of a moment, where people are at, where people are from, what they believe in,” Tec continues. “To us, our role is to paint a little bit of what our landscape looks like, what our hip-hop sounds like, what our hip-hop could sound like. All of the different sonics of our upbringing, we married them together to create something unique.”

Certainly, SDC weren’t the first artists to reinvent hip-hop on African terms. Yet, as African hip-hop ages, it’s still struggling to define its core integrity. And it’s somewhat stunning that even amid a career that eschews rap trends, SDC’s album run may represent a high-water mark of what the genre could strive to be.

The rappers’ charisma soon endeared them to an audience broader than the underground-heads who leapt at early cuts like “Tropicana” and “What You Want” (featuring Tomi Thomas). For the dedicated SDC fans, a new era was unfolding, where they could indulge in new levels of world-building from their favorite Nigerian rap savants.

“Maybe we were guilty of staying very regional for sometime as we were building,” admits Tec. “But then, our mindset really shifted to taking the music outside of Nigeria.”

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