Ebro sits down with Ghanaian rising star Black Sherif to dissect his debut album the Villain I never was

Johannesburg, 1 June 2023: Black Sherif says “The Homeless Song” was inspired by a period when he was actually homeless:

There was a turning point in my life that I was homeless. And from that time, how I saw things changed. And a few of the songs that I put on the album, I had written before The Homeless Song. But I felt like that point, that pivoting could be a proper start. That’s why I put it first. Because it happened within 24 hours, like 16 hours back I was at home with my boys. Fast forward, not even 24 hours after, I’m homeless in a car. No place to stay. It be crazy. So I wrote that song just that night.

Black Sherif says that people call him Kwaku because of “Kwaku the Traveller,” along with other names that stem from his music:

With me, every three months there’s a sound growth in my studio. So every era of that sound growth, at all the evolutions, they have nicknames, they have alter egos and names and stuff. Because at first when I was starting to write music, I used to say Sad Man Story. And it went on, Blacko, Kwaku Killer, Kwaku Rasta. I have so many names in the streets and everybody know the name. Yeah. You could say, “Who is Kwaku Rasta?” I will tell you that’s Black Sherif. “Who’s Kwaku Killer?” Black Sherif. “Who is KK?” Black Sherif. They know the names. So I just leave it to whatever you want to call me, call me. People even call me by my auntie’s name, Auntie Mary. I’m like, “Yeah.” I said it in my song, that’s what you heard. Call me by that. Let’s go man. It’s a story. My mom call me Sherif. My dad call me Rasta. Kwaku Rasta.