Emcee Africa
| Emcee Africa | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Reality competition |
| Created by | Jonathan Clarke |
| Presented by | Leslie 'Lee' Kasumba |
| Theme music composer | Don Juan (Octave Couplet) |
| Country of origin | South Africa |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 2 |
| No. of episodes | 26 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 52 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network | Channel O |
| Picture format |
480i (SDTV) (2000–2008) 1080i (HDTV) (2008–present) |
| Original release | May 31, 2008 – August 31, 2009 |
| External links | |
| Website | |
Emcee Africa - The Battle Chronicles was a talent show that was sponsored by Sprite. It was a continent-wide search for the premier freestyle MC/Rapper. The tour started in Accra, Ghana, and then went through Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Nairobi, Kenya, Luanda, Angola, Lagos, Nigeria and Johannesburg, South Africa.Gaborone, Botswana was included in the second season, while Luanda, Angola and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania were cut from the tour. The motive of the tour was not only to find the best freestyle MC, but to initiate international awareness of the 'street life' surrounding social and cultural context of the localized music. In other words, the tour was attempting to better contextualize the application and reception of hip hop culture in each visited country.
The winner received $10,000, a video and a song deal.
The first season of Emcee Africa followed the host Leslie 'Lee' Kasumba to the various host cities, where the local MC/Rapper's were invited to an audition. The final eight MC's were selected to face off in a knockout competition to determine the winner. During the auditions, each performer had two minutes to prove their candidacy for the final eight to a panel of judges. A topic was given to each contender to Freestyle about in order to ensure each contestant was truly improvising and not using any written material. After eight contestants were selected from each country, a separate contest was held, where the eight members would face off to battle each other in two 30 second parts, divided into 2 rounds, followed by the Final. The winner from each country was then flown into Johannesburg to compete for the "Emcee Africa" title, as well as the grand prize. A judge from each country's panel was then flown in to ensure neutrality in the final competition.
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Wikipedia