BIOGRAPHY OF FRICTION
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, performed on stages worldwide, build his own music studio, set up a foundation, got accepted to a music college in Holland and his music is being played on stations worldwide.
Coming from the ghetto and now being internationally succesfull, 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’. From age 12, he took every chance he got to perform during ghetto parties, in rap battles and radio stations.
V.I.P.: Friction was planning to set up a music 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 and VIP became more and more popular. Friction’s dog Chicago also became an official member of V.I.P. In 1997 the group was discovered by a television-presenter called Blakofi and a radio-presenter Michael Smith, during a performance at a street carnival. Blakofi became their manager and Michael Smith arranged for 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 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. He also released his second solo album, called ‘Auntie Serwaa’. The first single of this album, also called ‘Auntie Serwaa’became a hit and is still being , with a video that has more than 108.000 views at the moment.
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. Studying at the Rockacademy enabled Friction to professionalize his musical skills and to learn more about the music business. Settled in Holland as a college student, Friction started his own live band, and till this day he is to be seen on a lot of stages and festivals. In 2009, Friction was the support act of the reggae legend I Jah Man Levi. And in March 2014, he performed as the support act of Morgan Heritage.
‘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 Dutch reggae-artist DJ Blackfoot. Friction succesfully released a couple of songs of this album as singles;‘Mijn Alles’, ‘Wine It’and ‘Shake It’ (a featuring with Flexclusive) are being played on several radiostations.
