Tokiojo6ix: The Hip-Hop Band Creating Waves In Numbers

The pop definition of a band brings to mind a lead singer, a group of vocalists who'd also be instrumentalists strumming and jamming to songs they create.

Tokiojo6ix becomes an unlikely, motley crew of members with different talents in beat-making and song writing that came together to harness each other's talents into a unique album featuring brilliant artists. The effect of which models an all-star album.

A 'hip-hop band' should be the perfect term that aptly describes their brand, similar in sorts to other hip-hop Crews like “Migos”. Before the music, they all had a common interest: anime which should explain to other anime fans where their name was derived. (Although if you do not know, here it is: Tokio (Tokyo), represents a place of creativity and diversity, and '6ix' being an inverse of the Bass clef note).

"We had to choose a name that represented what we stood for," Miller, founder, said, "a name that isn't only unique which targets people of similar anime interest, but a name that embodies the beauty and variety true to the brand". We're not just rappers or singers, he added, we're a whole team of creativity from the start of music production to end. Benjamin, co-founder, who released the first single of the team, decided on the title Rude Musiq, "because we wanted to show Ghana unconventional music, and in a culture like ours anything unconventional is disrespectful, so the term 'rude' was us reclaiming this word often used in a bad context and repurposing it into something that we didn't feel ashamed of."

The band came into existence on 10th October 2018, by an act of collaboration between Benjamin(writer and rapper) and Miller(producer and writer), together they decided that unity worked in numbers, and after their first single, so many of their anime friends reached out to join what would become a remix which later became an album featuring differing projects from these various artists. One may box them into the genre of hip-hop only, but in the future, they're bound to explore other sub-genres as members of the band perform songs that do not solely fit into hip-hop. A lot of excitement went into the making of the album “Dark Nebula”. Imagine a room- filled with buzzing, overly-joyous and eager anime fanatics. For once, all the energy they'd put into discussing and predicting upcoming episodes of their favorite anime and manga was channeled into music production. With the cast of diligent promoters already on their band, Rude Musiq easily made it to “1000 plays” on apple music platform. "The song's charismatic beat composition and upbeat lyrics could count for the song's fast popularity too," said Miller, "we don't just promote music that's stale, and if stale music is promoted, it doesn't go as viral as ours did, we worked hard on music, production and promotion, so the effects have been dazzling as anyone who listens to the track can testify". We didn't want to be a cliché of artists pandering to audience's interests, says Benjamin, but the beauty in being ourselves is what we believe makes our tracks stand-out.

Truly, when anyone gives their music a listen, it's obvious that this group will make it far. That is, if they already aren't achieving too many successes in this short amount of time since their conception. Other members of the crew are: Andicole (Promoter), Amakye (Advisor), Moh “Madbak” Delwin (writer and rapper), Simeon Scorpio (writer and singer), BHBXsupreme (singer), Ray Joe Jeessuz (singer and producer) and Dwayne Rob (producer) and Akym (PRO).

The future looks good for Tokiojo6ix. The band is looking into making their messages more political. "Create music that effects change," says Miller, "now that our first album put on display our skills as artists, we'll now tackle problems like artists do." We're looking to collaborate with big names as well as indie acts in the music industry. A passion of Tokiojo6ix is to find and support upcoming talents, since we know it isn't easy to start out as a new artist, remarks co- founder Miller.

They're excited for the future and can't wait to become a public phenomenon making popular hits and bringing their creativity and ingenuity to the Ghanaian music scene. The world's their stage. Their advice to upcoming acts like themselves? "Join forces. Start a fire. Become a sensation."

Though the group was featured in recently released Lifoti's September 2019 issue 09, you can check it from below link's for your country: