M.anifest
Hip Hop · Hiplife
M.anifest is Kwame Ametepee Tsikata, a Ghanaian rapper, singer and producer born in Accra on 20 November 1982. His grandfather was the composer and ethnomusicologist J.…
Biography
M.anifest is Kwame Ametepee Tsikata, a Ghanaian rapper, singer and producer born in Accra on 20 November 1982. His grandfather was the composer and ethnomusicologist J. H. Kwabena Nketia, and his father is the lawyer Tsatsu Tsikata. He went to SOS-Hermann Gmeiner in Tema and then Macalester College in Minnesota, where he graduated in economics in 2005.
He built his career in the Twin Cities, paying for his first album, Manifestations (2007), with royalties from a Pepsi radio jingle. Immigrant Chronicles: Coming to America (2011) marked his move home. Along the way he toured with Africa Express and rapped on five songs from Damon Albarn’s Rocket Juice & the Moon project with Flea and Tony Allen. In 2015 The Guardian called him “the foremost rapper on the continent”.
His 2016 diss track “god MC”, aimed at Sarkodie, won Hip Hop Song of the Year at the 2017 Ghana Music Awards, where he was also named Best Rapper. The two later made peace and recorded “Brown Paper Bag” together. His albums include Apae (2013), Nowhere Cool (2016), The Gamble (2019), Madina to the Universe (2021) and New Road and Guava Trees (2025).
Latest Release
