Meaning construction in Nigerian multilingual hip hop: a study in sociology of music

1 Introduction

The wide acceptability of Nigerian version of hip hop music, home and abroad, indicates increasing value of the inclusion of local popular languages in the composition and performance of the music. In the text of many of the award winning singles and albums are mixtures of different languages ranging from English, Pidgin English, Yoruba, Igbo and other local dialects. The ethnic affinity of the singers notwithstanding, singers, composers and performers of contemporary Nigerian hip hop music adopt multilingualism for both market and aesthetic purposes (Liadi 2012; Liadi and Omobowale 2011). What inclusion of various languages shows is that it allows artists to engage in social dialogue with their audience, conveying their inner thoughts and philosophy, in such a way that it is easy to understand and acknowledge by fans. The choice of language mixing or switching within the text of a Nigerian hip hop artist is an important factor in terms of the interpretation of messages in the songs.

Hence, the focal point of this article is to examine the multilingual structure of and the meaning embedded in some selected Nigerian hip hop music. The analysis here involves the examination of lyrics and/or video clips of some selected artists in relation to and with the intention of exposing the underlying structure of meaning embedded in the songs. However, the article does not aim to delve extensively into the linguistic terminologies or structure in terms of how such will be done by a linguist. What the study is preoccupied with is language(s) preference of the artists (Agbo 2009) in the composition of their music in terms of exposing the mixing and fusion of various languages to present a musical story to their audiences. Also, the article demonstrates how the messages through the multi-language become meaningful in the construction of everyday social realities by the fans.

2 Multilingualism (code-switching) and hip hop music

Code-switching, according to Babalola and Taiwo (2009) is a sociolinguistic term and a product of multilingualism. The concept has been studied in considerable detail since about 1970, particularly from sociolinguistic point of view (Appel and Muysken 1987). Nelip (2006) noted that authors with focus on the studies of language acquisition, second language acquisition, and language learning use the term code switching to describe either multiple language speakers, or language learner practices involving the use of more than one language. However, different perspectives have been developed in the study of this concept, reflecting a variety of scholarly orientations (Sarkar et al. 2005). Generally, code-switching can be intentional and unintentional (Okolo 2002). It can also be inter-sentential that is “switches between sentences” or intra-sentential which describes “switches within sentence” (Babalola and Taiwo 2009: 3).

Whether intentional or intra-sentential the pertinent question, to follow Appel and Muysken (1987) is, why do people code switch in the course of a single conversation? Many studies, including those of Nigerian scholars such as Okolo (2002), Appel and Muysken (1987) among many others have attempted to provide answer to this question. To start with Appel and Muysken (1987), switching codes in conversation serves four functions: referential function, directive function, expressive function, phatic function and metalinguistic function. Okolo (2002) provided a broader classification under which the four functions identified by Apel and Muysken can be pigeon holed. Using tape recorded data collected from a longitudinal study that lasted three years, Okolo (2002) examined and identified the conversational roles and social functions of code switching among multiple language speakers. In Okolo’s (2002) view the reasons why people observe code switching in conversational situations include both social and psychological reasons. For him, “social and psychological factors …underlie code switching” (p. 240) and form the major reasons why people code switch in conversation.

In music, attempt has been made by various scholars to examine the uses of code switching in Hip hop music since the 1990s (Androutsopoulos 2006: 1). From German hip hop to Australian hip hop to Pinoy rap (Philippines) to Azeri rap (Azerbaijan) (Price 2007) to J hip hop (Japan) and to Nigerian hip hop, what is common to these variety of country-led hip hop is the mixing and switching of local languages in musical texts. Although it has come under different banners, code switching in hip music has been variously studied by Agbo (2009) ‘language alternations in Nigerian hip hop music’; Babalola and Taiwo (2009) ‘code switching in contemporary Nigerian music’; (Sarkar et al. 2005) ‘multilingual code switching in Montreal hip hop’; Bentahila and Davies (2002) ‘language mixing in rai music’; and Fenn and Prullo (2000) ‘language choice in hip hop in Tanzania and Malawi’ to mentioned a few. Common in the works of the authors mentioned above is a study of mixed codes in the lyrics of (hip hop) music.

Fenn and Prullo (2000) look at choices of language in hip-hop music in Tanzania and Malawi, two neighboring East African nations. They noted that rap music is carried out in the two major languages in Tanzania, Swahili and English. Fenn and Prullo (2000) observed in this study that while English rap borrows heavily from American hip-hop discourse, with such themes as parties and friends, Swahili rap focuses on issues pertinent to Tanzanians, like AIDS, drug use, corruption, unemployment and immigration from the country. The authors in the conclusion showed that Tanzanian hip-hop musicians mediate between English and Swahili, relying on both languages to construct a unique landscape for their music.

In Nigeria, Agbo (2009) examined the language choices of Nigerian musical artistes to understand how the musicians cleverly mixed languages as strategies to enhance the aesthetic and rhetorical qualities of their works. It was revealed, in the study, that the language alternation (code switching) patterns involve major Nigerian languages and English. The author (Agbo 2009) observed that language switching by the Nigerian artists has other connotations because they are viewed to also bear the qualities of identifying the artists’ linguistic identity and preferences. The author concludes that the employment of the multilingualism by the Nigerian musicians through code switching helps hip hop artists to achieve greater fan base. In addition, the creative use of multi-lingualism can achieve a greater understanding of the messages that the Nigerian artists try to pass across to their fan base.

3 Semiotics, structuralism and the Nigerian multilingual hip hop

To examine meaning construction in the musical lyrics of the Nigerian hip hop artists, the author draws on Fadinand de Saussure’s theory of structuralism. Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) has often been canonized as the founding father of modern linguistics (Aranovich and Wong 2022; Bishop and Phillips 2006) and by extension structuralism (Sørensen and Thellefsen 2022; Ritzer 2008). Saussure’s theory stresses the importance of internal structure dedicated to cognitive thought process or action of human minds in structuring the physical (material) or intangible (abstract) signs of their surroundings, and among them is the structure of linguistic signs in the language system that allows them to function as human beings and communicate with each other (Yakin and Totu 2014).

Saussure also introduced the concept of code to clarify how we assemble meaning from such relations – defined simply as the assignment of meaning to sign structures (Danesi 2022). For Saussure, language is wholly mental entity covering two elements, the signifier and the signified, which co-function to form the sign (Joseph 2022; Stoltz 2021). The fundamental distinction Saussure made between the concept of la langue (language) and la parole (speech) is of utmost importance because of its relevance in the explanations of the issues that surround this article. However, it is important to point out that there are more to the theory of sign by Saussure than just la parole and la langue. Beyond these two components of linguistic signs, Saussure developed what is called semiotic (the study of meanings of language in social life), distinguished between signifier (word) and signified (social meaning of the word). His binary way of thinking led Saussure to present several concepts in a form of dichotomy, for example, linguistic and nonlinguistic signs, arbitrary versus motivated, and others (Joseph 2022). According to Lemert (1979: 931) “semiotic is the study of signs and their meaning (in relations) to linguistic; but language is only one of many sign systems”. Whether semiotic or linguistics, these two must be viewed together to have a meaningful insight to a group’s language (sign) (Yakin and Totu 2014).

Structuralism which is described as a theoretical commitment to reveal the basic structural patterns in social and cultural phenomena (Joseph 2022) has often been said to derive many of its theoretical elements from the Saussure’s expositions in structural linguistics. In fact, as the Encyclopedia Americana 2003 puts it, structuralism and its followers take “structural linguistics as their methodological mode” (p. 568). However, the concern of structuralism as developed by Saussure differs from the major focus of structural functionalism (Ritzer 2008). Saussure’s theory concerns the study of the underlying structure of a social phenomenon to discover its elements of relations within the whole system (Rudloff and Kjærboe 2022). This theory is based on three assumptions: the systemic nature of significations, the relational and functional distinctions of the elements of significations and the arbitrary nature of significations (Bishop and Phillips 2006).

As Saussure posits, the study of language as a cultural signs/codes should focus on the system rather than the history of linguistic phenomena. This is because rather than history, language and the linguistic system is indeed a system of signs, and signs derive their meaning through their relations with other signs in the total structure of signs (Schinkel and Tacq 2004) in a speech community. In other words, signs/languages/codes only acquire meaning and value when they are interpreted in relations to each other. This claim is supported by arguing that social and cultural phenomena do not have essence on their own but are defined by their internal structure and the relations among their parts, and also by their relations with other phenomena in the relevant social and cultural systems (Encyclopedia Americana 2003). To this study, it is believed that this part of Saussure’ theory is aligned with the interpretive sociology’s view of social phenomenon. According to Adorjen and Kelly (2007) interpretive sociology embraces the principle that social life is subjective and that those who systematically study social life attend to how people make sense and interpret their social world, actions, and identities. The relationship between the signifier and the signified requires interpretation of signs in relation with other signs which also needs a familiarity with the sets of conventions or codes currently in use to communicate meaning in a cultural setting.

It is this last point that led Saussure to his famous distinction between different poles of language analysis, which relate to the difference between what he calls parole (the utterance or proposition) and langue (the language system) (Bishop & Philips, 2006). This distinction relates to differences between communal and individuation of language relations in a society such that the “collective (social) and the individual part of language” (Schinkel and Tacq 2004: 62–63) become explicit. Saussure’s distinction of la langue (language) and parole (speaking) provides this study with an adequate theoretical analytical tool to explain not only the structure of the multilingualism employed in the texts (parole) of the lyrics from the songs of selected hip hop artists but also the social signification of such multilingual texts in relations to its location within the larger context of the Nigerian cultural milleu. In this regards, the social objectification of the multilingual signs in multilingualism songs through the generations of group shared meanings and social identification of fans works in tandem with the speech like multilingual lyrics within the Nigerian hip hop.

As a group, the Nigerian hip hop artists, whether deliberately or not, give prominence to usage of multiple languages and coded words in their lyrics (Ajayi 2023; Ogah-Adejoh 2021; Akande 2020; Liadi 2012; Adedeji 2011). The seeming influence multi-ligualism has on the popularity of the Nigerian version of hip hop has also been well documented (Liadi and Omobowale 2011; Liadi 2012). Given the far-reaching effects hip hop messages have on young people’s behaviours, a semiotic analysis of meanings and interpretations of codes/slangs produced by prominent artists may represent an important milestone in scholarly attempt to further understand the social usage of languages among young people. The purpose of this article therefore is to explore social construction of meanings from selected songs of award-wining popular hip hop artists in Nigeria through the aid of semiotic analysis.

4 Materials and methods

The data used for this study was from the lyrics and videos of selected Nigerian hip hop artists. The author used purpose sampling technique to obtain sample of songs of the selected artists and the nightclubs visited for the purpose of observations. The lyrics of the songs used in the study were obtained from music from the back of the albums of the artists selected for the study. Those that were not available were sourced from copy of songs’ lyrics compiled in a pamphlet format that is hawked around and from the internet. The lyrics are particularly important source of material for the study.

Six songs from the music of four artists were selected for use in the study. In the case of Dbanj and 9ice two tracks from their songs were selected, (1) because the songs are sequel to each other. In other words, the message/story in the songs can better be understood in details when examined together. And (2), because the two selected songs, in the case of these two artists, were extremely popular among youths. The criteria for choosing the songs were the same used for selecting the artists who sang the songs. This selection was through scrutinization of awards lists of some of the major local and international music awarding organizations such as the Nigerian Music Award (NMA), Music TV (MTV) Europe/Africa, Music of Black Origin (MOBO), World Music Awards (WMA) and the Hip Hop World Awards (HHPA). To be included, an Artists/music must have won either an international or local awards (as a measure of his/its popularity) in the last five years. Also, the video clips of these selected songs were watched to detail some important verbal and nonverbal behaviours that helped to explain the social relations embedded in the music.

To help further our analysis, participant observations were conducted at three night clubs within Ibadan city between December 25^th to January 1st, 2020. The observations offered opportunities for the author and the research. Apart from the obvious and the usual justifications articulated for using participant observation, that is, the immersion of a researcher in the natural setting where the phenomenon understudy is taken place (Babbie 2005), participation offered further opportunity to observe the consumers of hip hop music in action and study the social vibes created periodically as some of the Afro hip hop were played by the DJ. Thus, the author was opportune to observe many social behaviours of clubbers in terms of the intensity and the immersion as the songs were played. Aside this, the Participant Observation conducted at the different nightclubs affirmed the choices of artists selected for this study. The author’s observed that the songs of these four artists selected for the study were repeatedly played throughout most part of the nights with only few interjections of songs of other musicians. This confirms the popularity and the currency of these artists both within the music industry and among the audiences.

Apart from the nightclub managers and DJs who had previous knowledge and idea about the presence of the author when the observations were being conducted, the observation was largely covert in nature. This of course is to avoid any form of interference with the nature of events and also to allow the author to intermittently hop out to record some of the important observations. In other words, the author presented himself as a clubber, danced and sometimes engaged in the usual ecstatic shout of fun along with other clubbers.

5 Results

This section presents the results from the analysis of findings from the lyrics of the selected artists. The results show how each selected artist create multiple slangs (as codes) within the community of fans who listens to their music and the meanings generated from the codes.

6 Discussions and conclusion

Using Saussure’s notion of signified and signifier, the article has argued that the codes used by popular hip hop artists in Nigeria are geared towards sub-cultural communication between the artists and their fans. Slangs, word representations are major elements in the Nigerian multilingual hip hop that endears music to many youth in the country. All the artists generally focused on presentation of themes that capture the sensibility of their fans. The musical themes veered from messages of love and marriages to sex to partying and drinking. There is a similar use of language in the songs of the artists. All the artists adopted multilingual codes-switching from one language to another in presentation of their messages. The codes in the songs generally symbolise and present messages or meaning that appears out of the mainstream cultural meanings. Listeners and artistes meet at the level of interpretations. In Saussure’s semiology, meanings are generated through an understanding of the binarity of la langue and la parole.

The multilingual hip-hop text/lyrics can be described as the parole as it is the apparent speech act of individual artists. La parole is the actual multilingual lyrics prepared by the artists, the structure of which is a fusion or unification of different signs/codes/languages. The lyrics being an individual artist’s conception and inner thoughts which, perhaps, may have gone through a series of processes of changes and modifications is, a priori design strategically focused to suit the purpose and fancy of a targeted body of fans. For example, when a lyric such as “am the Banj, my Jamaican friends dey call me skibanji. Listen, when koko master falls in love, make you know say water done pass garri” is composed and produced by the popular hip hop artist (Dbanj) to present himself as kokomaster, anyone uninitiated within the circle of the listeners of his music (particularly if such person is perhaps a stranger in Nigeria), may wonder and pose such questions as what sort of speech/utterances is the above? What does koko master mean? Yet, in linguistic terms this text/lyrics has all the nitty gritty of a speech, though, an individual isolated utterance. Hence, the speech will not make any relevant meanings to someone who perhaps is from Japan or even Britain and do not listen to Dbanji’s music. The speech/lyrics may still, in Saussuran conceptions, not make any sense/meaning to someone who is a Nigerian but do not share in the meaning of the several codes within the text. In other words, such text as the above cannot operate alone expect it is referred back to its speech community and locate the content and context of the texts within the social (structure) of the language(s) used – that is back to the langue.

La langue (language) in Saussure’s argument is a well-defined object in the heterogeneous mass of speech facts (Lemert 1979). It is the social side of speech, outside the individual who can never create or modify it by himself; it exists only by virtue of a sort of contract signed by members of the community (Lemert 1979). In essence, unlike parole which is an individual speech act, langue is more of group/collective’s products. Different cultural settings are endowed with codes of communication and interaction for which language is the most common. To understand the meaning of a code or language one must, in Saussure’s view relate or refer the code back to the speech community where it comes from. And it is within such referral that parole (the individual speech) comes to make sense. To quote Lemert (1982) “Saussure viewed la langue as the social system of conventions from which la parole draws it elements. And Schinckel and Tacq (2004) supports it by stating that la langue: “never exists completely within an individual, it is the social part of language, it is the whole stock of linguistic signs together, a reservoir, a sum total of all individual manifestations of language, parole” (p. 63).

The importance of this to the above discussion is that the Nigerian Hip Hop lyrics can have meaning if amenable to proper interpretations only within the context of the whole gamut of language systems in the social environment. The lyrical structure in naija hip hop is normatively in accordance with the grammatical structures of the various languages in use. When some of the codes such as “koko’, “ori e o fokasibe”, swagger-swagger”, Yahoozee”, “Maga don pay”, “control number”, “orobo to bad o”, “make you follow me bumper to bumper”, to mention just few street codes that appear in the musical text, it is only appropriate to locate the meaning and thus interpret them within the social context of their usage. It is only in this way, that the signifier (the codes/utterance/parole) of the music adequately provides the signified (meaning of the codes/words/langue).

The multilingual music is a tool for the expression of the experiences and internal philosophy of the musicians, which appears to find acceptance with the youths perhaps because both the artists and the listeners share same socio-environmental context. From all indications the hip hop musical lyrics has its niche (comprising of the language modes, listeners, performers etc.); it is only within this niche that the multilingual hip hop lyrical has become meaningful. Though, many of the slangs/languages that are used in the Nigerian hip hop have generated concerns among some older generation of Nigerians, one must be careful not to fall into ethnocentric potholes as the multilingual text of the Nigerian hip hop lyrics are an on-going dialogue between the audiences and the artists themselves. This is because some of the codes that find their ways into music multilingual hip-hop are sometimes derived from the street codes and slangs picked up among the youths.

Finally, the langue of the multilingual hip-hop provides an avenue for the emergence of certain subcultures and normative expectations when listeners are in groups. Here Saussure’s view is clearly important again. Saussure must have seen the structure of language as determinate of people’s lives and behavior since he believed that “meanings, the mind, and ultimately the social world are shaped by the structure of language (Ritzer 2008: 594). The world as it is observed, including the people and every other element in the environment, are by-products of the structure of language. For many of the Nigerian youths this is fast becoming a truism. Innumerate numbers of the contemporary youth not only speak but live by the codes and language structure of the multilingual hip hop lyrics. For example, in everyday conversations, for those who listen and abide by the rules of the Multilanguage structure, their conversations among colleagues, friends and even parents reflects these codes. The structure of multilingualism is easily decipherable in their terms. The world of the Nigerian hip hop listeners and the events that surrounds it are been shaped and reproduced by this phenomenon and anyone who do not share in it are viewed as unfashionable.

Furthermore, to operate or belong in this world it becomes essential to be conversant with the knowledge of and the right context for which multilingual musical terms derivable from hip hop are put to use. For example, code such as “orobo to bad” (by Wande Coal, a former member of the Mo Hit Group) generates important self and group consciousness. Orobo to bad is originally meant to describe Wande’s body mass (he is towards the plump side) in the music video. However, this multilingual lyrical code has been reinterpreted to mean and used for a beautiful girl who is fat. The knowledge of this latest musical slangs/codes and thus it inclusions in conversation among friends not only present the person as someone in ‘town’ or in vogue, the knowledge forecloses any doubt of the person’s lack of sense of belonging. For those who cannot show the knowledge of some of the slangs that are important to the group they are believed to be out of date and therefore requested to “move up” or they are ostracized from group membership. This may because the langue, as the social structure among certain subgroup, generates certain values and thus codes of conduct which members follows.

As an indication of the level of popularity of the music and the overwhelming effect it has on the general populace, the multilingual slangs generated from the lyrics are gradually creeping into the speech act of many people in the country, including those who will swear against ever listening to hip hop. Some of the slangs, which sometimes may be the coinage of the musician (i.e. koko, tongolo, etc.) were found to encourage some form of unique communication pattern among the audience of the music which forms the sub-culture of listeners. Besides, the multilingual slangs in the music are mutually intelligible to the musicians and the listeners. Although, various interpretations emerge from the consumption and the use of the slangs in the music, artists that come out with current slangs in his/her music usually have more followership than those who do not.