Ghanaian rapper and songwriter, Enoch Nana Yaw Oduro-Agyei, popularly known by his stage name Trigmatic, has named his top five songwriters of all times in the current generation (younger generation)and five of the older generation.
He explained that there are different kinds of songwriters; the ones who are good at composing songs, ones who write lyrics and the last group who are good at both.
When Arnold Mensah Elavanyo asked him in a phone interview on Zylofon FM to name his five best topmost songwriters of all time, he revealed he had five each from the younger and older generation.
But by the end of the interview, he named more than the number requested of him.
“My top five in Ghana now, currently, young people apart from myself I’ll say I love Akwaboah, Cina Soul, Kofi Kinata, AI, Worlasi,” he said
He added that Raquel is another great writer whose writing skills has not been recognized.
“We normally don’t realize the work Raquel writes but she’s a very good writer”
Touching on the older generation, he said, “One of the very greatest writers for me has been Ephraim Amu. I think he’s an amazing writer. Also, I love coming back down down down. Kojo Antwi is an amazing songwriter, Daddy Lumba is an amazing writer as well. I love Martin Nkansah and I love the writing of J. A. Adofo.”
He explained that another great writer he would have included if he wrote his own songs is Amakye Dede.
“Well, Amakye Dede, I love his songwriting but I also know that he used to have a songwriter some years back. I’ve forgotten his name he’s dead now. This is a story I heard from Akablay and I’ve also heard the same from one of the older musicians so I know that there is some consistency there”
Talking about who a songwriter is, he said a songwriter is one who has the skill of putting words and melodies together to create beautiful piece.
“I think that in songwriting there are different types of songwriters. There are ones who are able to write some music which are like composers and there are lyrical songwriters, they put the word in and there are ones who do both. So I think a songwriter to be one that is well-versed in the skill of putting words and melodies together to create a beautiful piece. That’s how I’ll define it” he stated
“Somebody like AI; I think AI even has won a songwriting competition internationally before. This was somewhere in 2004 or 2005 or so. And if you listen to his ‘Anger Management’ album you can tell this is somebody that has both lyrical writing and musical writing. He’s able to create both and then there musicians that are unable to write so maybe if they were publishers who pay writers to write for them. So, songwriting is a bit dicey and if you’re not careful you may call someone that’s also very good melodiously a bad songwriter but they may be the ones who created the melody for the song,” he continued.
He said for him, he loves the composition and added that he admires Wizkid for his talent as well as Worlasi, who is on his list.
“Worlasi is one person, he blows my mind. You hear a song and the composition, right from the beat to the melody to the lyrics of the song, for me it’s a bit of everything”
