As a ghetto boy from Africa, many people might have thought that Friction wouldn’t come far in his life. How wrong were they! Friction has already brought out five albums, been on tour all over Africa, build up his own music studio, even get accepted to a famous music school in Holland and is to been seen on a lot of stages with his own live band!
Coming from the ghetto and now being successful even in Europe, Friction shows that determination, positivity and of course a lot of talent can let one come far in life and in the music industry.
The beginning
Friction is born as Musah Haruna in the most well-known ghetto of Ghana’s capital city Accra. In that ghetto, called Mamobi Nima, Friction started to have dreams about becoming a big musician.
Since he was little, Friction was listening to records his father played and soon he composed his own music in a local language called ‘Hausa’. When he was 12 years old, he started to perform during ghetto parties and in battles.
V.I.P.
Friction was planning to set up a group, so he asked four guys he knew from ghetto battles to join him. He called his group ‘V.I.P’, Vision in Progress. Friction managed to have a lot of performances during festivals and in clubs with his group. Friction’s dog Chicago also became an official member of V.I.P. In 1997 V.I.P gave a performance during a street carnival. It was then that a television-presenter called Black Koffi and a radio-presenter called Michael Smith discovered the group. Black Koffi became their manager and Michael Smith gave them a contract by the record label ‘Precise Music’.
In 1998 V.I.P. dropped their first album ‘Bibibaao’. They were already famous in Accra, but this album gave them nationwide fame. They became the most popular hiplife-group in Ghana. In 2000 they released their second album ‘Ye de Aba’. This album was even more succesfull than the first one. In that same year, Friction featured in a song ‘Stop AIDS, Love Life’, among many other Ghanaian artists. The song was part of a nationwide AIDS awareness campaign.
Letting dreams come true
Although his group V.I.P. was very successful, Friction felt it was time for him to develop himself as an individual artist. After the second album he left the group. In 2002 he released his first solo album ‘Big Trouble’. Many people were disappointment when he left V.I.P., but when they hear his solo album, they knew Friction was up to bigger, greater things. He had shows all over West-Africa; in Nigeria, Togo, Burkina Faso. Friction also started with his own foundation ‘Hipfactory’. With this organization Friction wanted to keep the ghetto youth away from the streets. He organized soccer-tournaments and gave the children the chance to come to a studio to record music together.
Since Friction was young he had plans to build his own studio and to start his own record label. In the years after he dropped his album, he focused on this plan. In 2006 he opened his studio ‘Hipfactory Recording Studio’ and launched his own record label ‘Hipfactory Records’ in Ghana.
In that same year, Friction was accepted to the Fontys Rockacademy, a music school in Holland. It was the first time that the school accepted someone from Africa, and for Friction it was a dream come true. This enabled him to professionalize his musical skills and learn more about the European music industry. Before he started his education in September 2006, he first recorded his second solo album ‘Auntie Serwa’ and he shot the videoclip for the first single, also called ‘Auntie Serwa’. This song is a feature with a well-known Ghanaian reggae artist ‘Black Prophet’.
Settled in Holland as a student of the Rockacademy, Friction started his own live band, and till this day he is to be seen on a lot of stages and festivals.
‘Ghetto Blues’
In October 2010, Friction released his 3rd solo-album, called ‘Ghetto Blues’, an album which contains a perfect mix of urban, reggae and afro beats and collabos with artists like Ghanaian superstar Samini and the famous Dutch reggae-artist DJ Blackfoot.
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