Hagan’s throwing the party you missed by a generation.
We caught up with the South London producer and DJ to talk about his new EP 'Hagan's Calling' and his plans to reinvent Highlife for the modern dance floor.
Hagan’s mother used to tell him about something called Afternoon Jump. In Ghana, before going out at night was always an option, people would show up to makeshift afternoon discos, play records, and dance. No dress code, no flyers, and no 2 AM headliner. Just the music and whoever wanted to be there. Hagan grew up in South London hearing about those rooms the way most diaspora kids hear about their parents’ Ghana, as a place that sounded too good to have ever really worked the way they described.
Hagan’s Calling is, in part, a love letter to a room he has never been in.
If you play the EP front to back, the first thing you notice is how natural everything sounds together. Listening to Mfantsefo Dance, Hagan takes South African 3-step, which is all rolling drums and bass you feel in your body, and threads Highlife guitar lines through the middle of it, and the two waltz together with the ease of sounds that grew up on the same block even though they come from opposite ends of the continent. Guitarist Bright Osei and saxophonist Kwadwo Asare recorded their parts and engineer MikeMillzOn’Em mixed the vocal sessions in Ghana. Other tracks such as Slow Motion were started in a studio in Brazil, with tracking sessions with zoudè in Germany, and everything was taken to the UK for a final mix by Matt Doughty.Four countries, multiple sessions, and a final product that sounds like everyone was in the same room on the same afternoon, which, given that they never were, is a small technical miracle.
Hagan shares with us that Mfantsefo Dance exists because of a problem he kept running into behind the DJ booth. For years, he would drop Ghanaian records into London sets loaded withSouth African house and UK club sounds. The Highlife tracks would connect emotionally but trip the momentum of the set. So he started making the records he wanted to play himself. “I wanted to figure out a way to reimagine how Highlife music could sound on a dance floor,” he says. “In the UK, we have a lot of South African music in the clubs, and a lot of us who are not familiar with the languages don’t understand the lyrics, but it’s the feeling.” He mentions he wanted that for Ghanaian music too.
Courtesy of Adiam Yemane
Mfantsefo Dance is, among other things, a song Hagan wanted his mother to recognise. He wanted to give her the song she could have been hearing in one of those Afternoon Jump rooms, rebuilt in the production language he works in now. For that he needed M.anifest, one of Ghana’s most accomplished lyricists and, as it turned out on our call, its most enthusiastic collaborator. M.anifest later brought in RCEE for the velvety pipes you hear on the track.
RCEE was already well into his own Highlife-adjacent EP when the demo arrived. He sent his vocals back the next day. “When I heard the sound,” he shares, “I thought the song was already done.” Between the three of them, in three different rooms, it came down to voice notes and a shared Apple Notes document. “Apple Notes,” Hagan says. “Thank God for that.”
When we’re on Zoom with Hagan, M.anifest, and RCEE, M.anifest is at his desk, camera on, RCEE is calling in from a car, and Hagan is somewhere in London, easy in his chair, his calm demeanor in contrast to the music he makes making him ever the Clark Kent of the dance floor. Three different locations for a call about a record built the same way. M.anifest, who hasn’t waited for a question, starts in on the compliments. He’s every bit as friendly in conversation as he sounds on the track, the person who makes an hour-long interview feel like you’re all just talking. “Come on, 3-step and Highlife together? Who thought of that?” Hagan is warm and modest. “Sometimes my attention to detail doesn’t work in my favor,” he admits sheepishly, “because sometimes I’m a bit too indecisive.”
Mfantsefo Dance is sung partly in Twi, which puts it in a room where not everyone will know exactly what is being said, including, in plenty of cases, Ghanaians in the crowd who grew up abroad and came to the music before they came to the language. Hagan heard the demos and admits he was glad. “It’s an opportunity for the language to transcend,” he expresses, to be part of a sound that’s quite different to what Ghanaians typically hear. RCEE, who has always felt this way, puts it in more practical terms. The production is what does the work of getting a song across, the language is just the vehicle. “When the production is right,” he says, “it gives you room to put any sort of language you want. Even one word, hey, hey, hey, and it’ll still be a vibe.” M.anifest has been making the larger version of this point for most of his career, and you can tell. “It is not literal language,” he adds. “It is music vocabulary. The doper your music vocabulary, the more you connect.” He cites the South African records packing rooms across Ghana right now, most of the crowd singing without understanding a word. He also cites Gangnam Style, and everyone on the call, remembering the era like a flashback, nods in unplanned unison.
Hagan sequenced Hagan’s Calling the way any good DJ would close out a night: you build, you peak, you bring people back down. The instrumental title track Hagan’s Calling comes first, then Mfantsefo Dance pulls you off the wall and onto the floor, Bass Bin hits with hypnotic low-end that sounds purpose-built for destroying speakers, and Slow Motion delivers the melodic comedown with a future track he’s been working on tucked into its ending. The entire arc is so complete the EP hits just as hard on headphones at 2pm as it would in a room full of people at 2am. “It just naturally flowed the way it did,” Hagan tells, and M.anifest, unprompted, offered what might be the most concise critical endorsement of the whole EP: “Your sound architecture is crazy, bro.”
The vocal chops in Mfantsefo Dance, Bass Bin, and the title track are all Hagan’s own voice, run through a little autotune, which he dropped as a casual aside at the very end of the call, to the collective shock of everyone on it, including the people who sang on the track. His vocalist debut is not, he was quick to clarify, something he’s currently planning.
Hagan’s Calling is out now under Busy Creating, his own imprint, and available to stream now on Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp. Because good things shouldn’t have to wait.
Courtesy of Adiam Yemane
Hagan, you’ve been building this sound across multiple projects. Where does Hagan’s Calling sit for you. Is it the arrival, or still part of the journey?
Hagan: Both. With each project I’m trying to explore different sounds, and this one was heavily inspired by 3-step, so in that sense it’s an arrival—a more refined sound than anything I’ve done before. But the journey isn’t finished. There are more ideas, more directions. So, yeah. Both.
The artists on this record are from Accra, you’re based in London, and the EP has been tested in Johannesburg and Amsterdam. Where does Hagan’s Calling actually belong geographically, if anywhere?
I don’t think I’m trying to place it in a specific location. Even in how it was produced—I started some tracks in Brazil, refined others back in Ghana, and there’s the sessions I had in Germany and the UK. Depending on where I’ve been, I’m pulling from the landscape, the people, the collaborators around me. The Highlife guitars give it something a Ghanaian listener will immediately recognise, but the low-end is dense enough that someone from the UK or South Africa can connect to it just as deeply. It represents more than one place. That’s kind of the point.
“I don’t think I’m trying to place it in a specific location. Even in how it was produced—it represents more than one place. That’s kind of the point.”
— Hagan
When you play the EP in order —Hagan’s Calling, then Mfantsefo Dance, then Bass Bin, then Slow Motion—it feels like a DJ telling a story across a night. Was mirroring a DJ set arc on a digital EP intentional? Did you sequence it that way from the start or did it fall into place?
Hagan: It was intentional. I stepped away from being a producer and put on my listener hat and asked myself: with two vocal tracks and two instrumentals, what tells the journey best? I could have led with both instrumentals, but then you’re holding the strongest pieces back. So instead I let the instrumental title track introduce the world, then brought in Mfantsefo Dance to take it somewhere vocal and emotional, then hit harder with Bass Bin to go deeper, and used Slow Motion to bring everything back down. It’s the same logic I use behind the decks. I landed on it and didn’t change a thing.
With Mfantsefo Dance specifically, you’ve talked about wanting Highlife to have a home on the dance floor. Is that where the Afternoon Jump story comes in?
Hagan: There were two reasons I went in that direction. The first goes back to something my mom always used to tell me about Afternoon Jump. In Ghana, before going out late at night was always an option, people would go to makeshift afternoon discos and dance. I wanted to communicate what a tune she could have been hearing in that time, with a reformed version of the style I make today. And then I wanted to figure out a way to reimagine how Highlife music could sound on a dance floor. When I first started DJing, Ghanaian music was what I used to play, and one of the challenges was trying to mix it in with UK songs. So one of the things I said to myself as a producer was to figure out a way to reimagine Highlife for the dance floor.
M.anifest, you’ve talked about your approach to collaboration being that a song has to call to you first. What did Hagan’s beat say to you that made you want to jump on it?
M.anifest: It was innately compelling. Familiar, hypnotic—that’s where a lot of Hagan’s work lives. But what really sold it was how innovative it was. 3-step and Highlife together? Who thought of that? Two different forms from different parts of the continent, both pointed toward the same thing: getting people on the dance floor. When I hear something like that, a couple of WTFs go through my head, and then I’m sold.
Two countries, multiple sessions, voice notes. How did you actually pull this off?
M.anifest: He sent me a voice note with a clear vision—directional enough that I understood where he was going, open enough that he gave me carte blanche. Being that it was the first time we were working together, and knowing how independently he creates, I was curious. I put a bunch of rough ideas on the track and sent it back. He went through them, picked the parts he wanted to build out—”let’s expand on this, let’s make this the main part”—and built the arrangement around that. It was actually great being so produced by him. Very seamless. We also ended up with a shared Apple Notes.
Hagan: Yeah, the back and forth was everything. First iteration of ideas from M.anifest, then he pulled in RCEE, and after I had both, I’d go back and make sure the arrangement had room for what they were delivering. Build, revise, repeat. Apple Notes. Thank God for that.
“Apple Notes. Thank God for that.”
— Hagan
RCEE, your music tends to sit in a slower, more mellow vibe. What did you do differently to show up on this track without losing your sound?
RCEE: I was already on my Highlife path when the demo arrived—I was recording for my own EP at the time. When M.anifest sent it to me, it felt so in tune with what I was already making, I thought the song was already done. It could have fit my EP. The instrumentation, the melodies—there’s piano, there’s Highlife, there’s three-step. The only other producer I’ve worked with who got close to this kind of sound was Afrolektra. When M.anifest told me it was mine to flow on, I thought: if I have the opportunity, why not?
M.anifest, you’re known for your bars. How do you access a more playful, dance-floor register without losing what you’re already known for?
M.anifest: When there’s direction, it doesn’t mean change who you are, it means access different parts of your skill set. I can’t help being lyrical. But lyrical doesn’t have to mean complicated. It might just mean finding the one line that makes you grin. “Wear your smile, don’t forget”, “If you tell me to walk, I’ll run”, “If you tell me to jump, I’ll say how high.” That’s lyricism—just operating at a different register. And what makes it easier is working with someone like Hagan, who has a clear vision from the start.
The track is almost entirely in Twi, but it’s going to be played in rooms where some people won’t understand it and that includes a lot of Ghanaians too. Was it important to you that the language could carry itself without a translation, or was that something you had to consciously work toward?
RCEE: I’ve never really paid attention to language when making music. I grew up on songs I didn’t understand and loved them deeply. For a sound to cross over, it’s the production that does the work. When the production is right, it gives you room to put any language you want on it—even one word, hey, hey, hey, and it’ll still be a vibe.
M.anifest: It’s not literal language. It’s music vocabulary. The doper your music vocabulary, the more you connect. We live in a world that went through Gangnam Style. People need to stop worrying about the literal language and start thinking about whether the musical vocabulary is landing. The production, the hook, the intonation—that’s what crosses.
“We live in a world that went through Gangnam Style. People need to stop worrying about the literal language and start thinking about whether the musical vocabulary is landing.”
— M.anifest
Hagan: When I heard the demos with Twi on them, I was glad. It’s an opportunity for the language to reach rooms it hasn’t been in before, carried by a sound built specifically to move people.
Listening to the EP, it almost feels cinematic—like it could score a film as easily as fill a dance floor. Is that something you think about?
Hagan: Absolutely. That’s actually one of the directions I’m looking to move into—scoring for film and TV. Whenever I’m making music I’m thinking about arrangement a great deal, and about how a piece would feel if it were synced with moving images. I’ve been lucky to work with people in the film and creative industries who’ve helped me produce visuals for past projects, and all the visuals for this EP were produced by Mike Calandra, Adiam Yemane and Tierney Walker, who are very detailed when it comes to that intersection
Mfantsefo Dance feels like it’s doing three things at once. M.anifest is carrying the legacy, RCEE is carrying the revival, and Hagan’s production is pulling the sound somewhere new. Was that the plan from the start?
Hagan: I started with the beat, and then I knew I needed someone who could carry great stories from Ghana—that’s M.anifest. M.anifest mentioned RCEE, and I’d already heard of RCEE as a new artist who was exploring Highlife differently. It fit the puzzle I was trying to build from the start. It worked out exactly how I wanted it to.
Twi is one of the most melodic languages in the world and it still hasn’t broken into the global market the way it should. Mfantsefo Dance feels like it could be the beginning of that. Where do you see experimental and unapologetically Ghanaian music going from here?
RCEE: There’s a wave happening organically—nobody called a meeting. People are going back to Highlife in a real way. I personally don’t see what else can be done with Afrobeats right now. But Highlife? There’s something to it I can’t fully explain, except that it’s catchy in a way that lasts. “How to Beat” is a typical Highlife sound and it’s being appreciated now, over a decade later. A song like Mfantsefo Dance, with the right push, can do the same.
“I personally don’t see what else can be done with Afrobeats right now. But Highlife? There’s something to it I can’t fully explain, except that it’s catchy in a way that lasts.”
— RCEE
Hagan: I agree. I think there’ll be more successful attempts at bridging different sounds with Highlife, and I hope this is one example of how to do it—at least from a dance producer’s perspective.
M.anifest: Experimentation is the only way forward. We have the sauce, but it’s like cuisine—even waakye, if someone adds a little something-something and it slaps, you didn’t see it coming, but there it is. Don’t put music in boxes. Do you know how much dance music exists in Ghana already? The sounds at a Sunday funeral in Accra—that is dance music. What took South African music global is experimentation. If you’d told me ten years ago that clubs across Ghana would be packed with people doing the hand movements to Amapiano beats, would anybody have convinced you? That’s what happens when people stop being afraid of being different.
Hagan, you released this under Busy Creating, your own imprint. What were you protecting creatively?
Hagan: Freedom, really. No internal blockers, no external blockers. In 2026, label backing is great, but building your own setup, your own timeline, is just as valuable. If I want to release something tomorrow, I can. If I want to take a different route for something else, I can do that too. Just the freedom to express myself whenever I want to.
Written by: HQ
Hagan’s mother used to tell him about something called Afternoon Jump. In Ghana, before going out at night was always an option, people would show up to makeshift afternoon discos, play records, and dance. No dress code, no flyers, and no 2 AM headliner. Just the music and whoever wanted to be there. Hagan grew up in South London hearing about those rooms the way most diaspora kids hear about their parents’ Ghana, as a place that sounded too good to have ever really worked the way they described.
Hagan’s Calling is, in part, a love letter to a room he has never been in.
If you play the EP front to back, the first thing you notice is how natural everything sounds together. Listening to Mfantsefo Dance, Hagan takes South African 3-step, which is all rolling drums and bass you feel in your body, and threads Highlife guitar lines through the middle of it, and the two waltz together with the ease of sounds that grew up on the same block even though they come from opposite ends of the continent. Guitarist Bright Osei and saxophonist Kwadwo Asare recorded their parts and engineer MikeMillzOn’Em mixed the vocal sessions in Ghana. Other tracks such as Slow Motion were started in a studio in Brazil, with tracking sessions with zoudè in Germany, and everything was taken to the UK for a final mix by Matt Doughty.Four countries, multiple sessions, and a final product that sounds like everyone was in the same room on the same afternoon, which, given that they never were, is a small technical miracle.
Hagan shares with us that Mfantsefo Dance exists because of a problem he kept running into behind the DJ booth. For years, he would drop Ghanaian records into London sets loaded withSouth African house and UK club sounds. The Highlife tracks would connect emotionally but trip the momentum of the set. So he started making the records he wanted to play himself. “I wanted to figure out a way to reimagine how Highlife music could sound on a dance floor,” he says. “In the UK, we have a lot of South African music in the clubs, and a lot of us who are not familiar with the languages don’t understand the lyrics, but it’s the feeling.” He mentions he wanted that for Ghanaian music too.
Courtesy of Adiam Yemane
Mfantsefo Dance is, among other things, a song Hagan wanted his mother to recognise. He wanted to give her the song she could have been hearing in one of those Afternoon Jump rooms, rebuilt in the production language he works in now. For that he needed M.anifest, one of Ghana’s most accomplished lyricists and, as it turned out on our call, its most enthusiastic collaborator. M.anifest later brought in RCEE for the velvety pipes you hear on the track.
RCEE was already well into his own Highlife-adjacent EP when the demo arrived. He sent his vocals back the next day. “When I heard the sound,” he shares, “I thought the song was already done.” Between the three of them, in three different rooms, it came down to voice notes and a shared Apple Notes document. “Apple Notes,” Hagan says. “Thank God for that.”
When we’re on Zoom with Hagan, M.anifest, and RCEE, M.anifest is at his desk, camera on, RCEE is calling in from a car, and Hagan is somewhere in London, easy in his chair, his calm demeanor in contrast to the music he makes making him ever the Clark Kent of the dance floor. Three different locations for a call about a record built the same way. M.anifest, who hasn’t waited for a question, starts in on the compliments. He’s every bit as friendly in conversation as he sounds on the track, the person who makes an hour-long interview feel like you’re all just talking. “Come on, 3-step and Highlife together? Who thought of that?” Hagan is warm and modest. “Sometimes my attention to detail doesn’t work in my favor,” he admits sheepishly, “because sometimes I’m a bit too indecisive.”
Mfantsefo Dance is sung partly in Twi, which puts it in a room where not everyone will know exactly what is being said, including, in plenty of cases, Ghanaians in the crowd who grew up abroad and came to the music before they came to the language. Hagan heard the demos and admits he was glad. “It’s an opportunity for the language to transcend,” he expresses, to be part of a sound that’s quite different to what Ghanaians typically hear. RCEE, who has always felt this way, puts it in more practical terms. The production is what does the work of getting a song across, the language is just the vehicle. “When the production is right,” he says, “it gives you room to put any sort of language you want. Even one word, hey, hey, hey, and it’ll still be a vibe.” M.anifest has been making the larger version of this point for most of his career, and you can tell. “It is not literal language,” he adds. “It is music vocabulary. The doper your music vocabulary, the more you connect.” He cites the South African records packing rooms across Ghana right now, most of the crowd singing without understanding a word. He also cites Gangnam Style, and everyone on the call, remembering the era like a flashback, nods in unplanned unison.
Hagan sequenced Hagan’s Calling the way any good DJ would close out a night: you build, you peak, you bring people back down. The instrumental title track Hagan’s Calling comes first, then Mfantsefo Dance pulls you off the wall and onto the floor, Bass Bin hits with hypnotic low-end that sounds purpose-built for destroying speakers, and Slow Motion delivers the melodic comedown with a future track he’s been working on tucked into its ending. The entire arc is so complete the EP hits just as hard on headphones at 2pm as it would in a room full of people at 2am. “It just naturally flowed the way it did,” Hagan tells, and M.anifest, unprompted, offered what might be the most concise critical endorsement of the whole EP: “Your sound architecture is crazy, bro.”
The vocal chops in Mfantsefo Dance, Bass Bin, and the title track are all Hagan’s own voice, run through a little autotune, which he dropped as a casual aside at the very end of the call, to the collective shock of everyone on it, including the people who sang on the track. His vocalist debut is not, he was quick to clarify, something he’s currently planning.
Hagan’s Calling is out now under Busy Creating, his own imprint, and available to stream now on Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp. Because good things shouldn’t have to wait.
Courtesy of Adiam Yemane
Hagan, you’ve been building this sound across multiple projects. Where does Hagan’s Calling sit for you. Is it the arrival, or still part of the journey?
Hagan: Both. With each project I’m trying to explore different sounds, and this one was heavily inspired by 3-step, so in that sense it’s an arrival—a more refined sound than anything I’ve done before. But the journey isn’t finished. There are more ideas, more directions. So, yeah. Both.
The artists on this record are from Accra, you’re based in London, and the EP has been tested in Johannesburg and Amsterdam. Where does Hagan’s Calling actually belong geographically, if anywhere?
I don’t think I’m trying to place it in a specific location. Even in how it was produced—I started some tracks in Brazil, refined others back in Ghana, and there’s the sessions I had in Germany and the UK. Depending on where I’ve been, I’m pulling from the landscape, the people, the collaborators around me. The Highlife guitars give it something a Ghanaian listener will immediately recognise, but the low-end is dense enough that someone from the UK or South Africa can connect to it just as deeply. It represents more than one place. That’s kind of the point.
“I don’t think I’m trying to place it in a specific location. Even in how it was produced—it represents more than one place. That’s kind of the point.”
— Hagan
When you play the EP in order —Hagan’s Calling, then Mfantsefo Dance, then Bass Bin, then Slow Motion—it feels like a DJ telling a story across a night. Was mirroring a DJ set arc on a digital EP intentional? Did you sequence it that way from the start or did it fall into place?
Hagan: It was intentional. I stepped away from being a producer and put on my listener hat and asked myself: with two vocal tracks and two instrumentals, what tells the journey best? I could have led with both instrumentals, but then you’re holding the strongest pieces back. So instead I let the instrumental title track introduce the world, then brought in Mfantsefo Dance to take it somewhere vocal and emotional, then hit harder with Bass Bin to go deeper, and used Slow Motion to bring everything back down. It’s the same logic I use behind the decks. I landed on it and didn’t change a thing.
With Mfantsefo Dance specifically, you’ve talked about wanting Highlife to have a home on the dance floor. Is that where the Afternoon Jump story comes in?
Hagan: There were two reasons I went in that direction. The first goes back to something my mom always used to tell me about Afternoon Jump. In Ghana, before going out late at night was always an option, people would go to makeshift afternoon discos and dance. I wanted to communicate what a tune she could have been hearing in that time, with a reformed version of the style I make today. And then I wanted to figure out a way to reimagine how Highlife music could sound on a dance floor. When I first started DJing, Ghanaian music was what I used to play, and one of the challenges was trying to mix it in with UK songs. So one of the things I said to myself as a producer was to figure out a way to reimagine Highlife for the dance floor.
M.anifest, you’ve talked about your approach to collaboration being that a song has to call to you first. What did Hagan’s beat say to you that made you want to jump on it?
M.anifest: It was innately compelling. Familiar, hypnotic—that’s where a lot of Hagan’s work lives. But what really sold it was how innovative it was. 3-step and Highlife together? Who thought of that? Two different forms from different parts of the continent, both pointed toward the same thing: getting people on the dance floor. When I hear something like that, a couple of WTFs go through my head, and then I’m sold.
Two countries, multiple sessions, voice notes. How did you actually pull this off?
M.anifest: He sent me a voice note with a clear vision—directional enough that I understood where he was going, open enough that he gave me carte blanche. Being that it was the first time we were working together, and knowing how independently he creates, I was curious. I put a bunch of rough ideas on the track and sent it back. He went through them, picked the parts he wanted to build out—”let’s expand on this, let’s make this the main part”—and built the arrangement around that. It was actually great being so produced by him. Very seamless. We also ended up with a shared Apple Notes.
Hagan: Yeah, the back and forth was everything. First iteration of ideas from M.anifest, then he pulled in RCEE, and after I had both, I’d go back and make sure the arrangement had room for what they were delivering. Build, revise, repeat. Apple Notes. Thank God for that.
“Apple Notes. Thank God for that.”
— Hagan
RCEE, your music tends to sit in a slower, more mellow vibe. What did you do differently to show up on this track without losing your sound?
RCEE: I was already on my Highlife path when the demo arrived—I was recording for my own EP at the time. When M.anifest sent it to me, it felt so in tune with what I was already making, I thought the song was already done. It could have fit my EP. The instrumentation, the melodies—there’s piano, there’s Highlife, there’s three-step. The only other producer I’ve worked with who got close to this kind of sound was Afrolektra. When M.anifest told me it was mine to flow on, I thought: if I have the opportunity, why not?
M.anifest, you’re known for your bars. How do you access a more playful, dance-floor register without losing what you’re already known for?
M.anifest: When there’s direction, it doesn’t mean change who you are, it means access different parts of your skill set. I can’t help being lyrical. But lyrical doesn’t have to mean complicated. It might just mean finding the one line that makes you grin. “Wear your smile, don’t forget”, “If you tell me to walk, I’ll run”, “If you tell me to jump, I’ll say how high.” That’s lyricism—just operating at a different register. And what makes it easier is working with someone like Hagan, who has a clear vision from the start.
The track is almost entirely in Twi, but it’s going to be played in rooms where some people won’t understand it and that includes a lot of Ghanaians too. Was it important to you that the language could carry itself without a translation, or was that something you had to consciously work toward?
RCEE: I’ve never really paid attention to language when making music. I grew up on songs I didn’t understand and loved them deeply. For a sound to cross over, it’s the production that does the work. When the production is right, it gives you room to put any language you want on it—even one word, hey, hey, hey, and it’ll still be a vibe.
M.anifest: It’s not literal language. It’s music vocabulary. The doper your music vocabulary, the more you connect. We live in a world that went through Gangnam Style. People need to stop worrying about the literal language and start thinking about whether the musical vocabulary is landing. The production, the hook, the intonation—that’s what crosses.
“We live in a world that went through Gangnam Style. People need to stop worrying about the literal language and start thinking about whether the musical vocabulary is landing.”
— M.anifest
Hagan: When I heard the demos with Twi on them, I was glad. It’s an opportunity for the language to reach rooms it hasn’t been in before, carried by a sound built specifically to move people.
Listening to the EP, it almost feels cinematic—like it could score a film as easily as fill a dance floor. Is that something you think about?
Hagan: Absolutely. That’s actually one of the directions I’m looking to move into—scoring for film and TV. Whenever I’m making music I’m thinking about arrangement a great deal, and about how a piece would feel if it were synced with moving images. I’ve been lucky to work with people in the film and creative industries who’ve helped me produce visuals for past projects, and all the visuals for this EP were produced by Mike Calandra, Adiam Yemane and Tierney Walker, who are very detailed when it comes to that intersection
Mfantsefo Dance feels like it’s doing three things at once. M.anifest is carrying the legacy, RCEE is carrying the revival, and Hagan’s production is pulling the sound somewhere new. Was that the plan from the start?
Hagan: I started with the beat, and then I knew I needed someone who could carry great stories from Ghana—that’s M.anifest. M.anifest mentioned RCEE, and I’d already heard of RCEE as a new artist who was exploring Highlife differently. It fit the puzzle I was trying to build from the start. It worked out exactly how I wanted it to.
Twi is one of the most melodic languages in the world and it still hasn’t broken into the global market the way it should. Mfantsefo Dance feels like it could be the beginning of that. Where do you see experimental and unapologetically Ghanaian music going from here?
RCEE: There’s a wave happening organically—nobody called a meeting. People are going back to Highlife in a real way. I personally don’t see what else can be done with Afrobeats right now. But Highlife? There’s something to it I can’t fully explain, except that it’s catchy in a way that lasts. “How to Beat” is a typical Highlife sound and it’s being appreciated now, over a decade later. A song like Mfantsefo Dance, with the right push, can do the same.
“I personally don’t see what else can be done with Afrobeats right now. But Highlife? There’s something to it I can’t fully explain, except that it’s catchy in a way that lasts.”
— RCEE
Hagan: I agree. I think there’ll be more successful attempts at bridging different sounds with Highlife, and I hope this is one example of how to do it—at least from a dance producer’s perspective.
M.anifest: Experimentation is the only way forward. We have the sauce, but it’s like cuisine—even waakye, if someone adds a little something-something and it slaps, you didn’t see it coming, but there it is. Don’t put music in boxes. Do you know how much dance music exists in Ghana already? The sounds at a Sunday funeral in Accra—that is dance music. What took South African music global is experimentation. If you’d told me ten years ago that clubs across Ghana would be packed with people doing the hand movements to Amapiano beats, would anybody have convinced you? That’s what happens when people stop being afraid of being different.
Hagan, you released this under Busy Creating, your own imprint. What were you protecting creatively?
Hagan: Freedom, really. No internal blockers, no external blockers. In 2026, label backing is great, but building your own setup, your own timeline, is just as valuable. If I want to release something tomorrow, I can. If I want to take a different route for something else, I can do that too. Just the freedom to express myself whenever I want to.
On the latest episode of The African Imaginary, the gentleman of hip hop gets into family lore, lo-fi Highlife, and why the machines are only coming for the mediocre.
Twelve years after “Tonga,” the polyglot Accra-and-New-York-based artist and self-producer is still mixing his own vocals at midnight and chasing the one listener who’s never heard of him.
