Kafui Dey interviews Papi Adabraka

Kiss the Ladies, King of Adabraka: A Conversation with Papi Adabraka

He built his first guitar as a child in Adabraka and called his first band Abiza, which means to ask. He was the one who always talked when the group was shy. He was the one who invested his own money when the others made excuses. He wrote African Girls in fifteen to twenty minutes. He won two VGMAs the same night, Discovery of the Year and Pop Song of the Year, and in his excitement told the audience they voted for me instead of us. He is Luther Adabraka — Papi to everyone who grew up with him, Papi 55 to those who remember the glory days, Kiss the Ladies to his women's fellowship, King of Adabraka to himself. He is back with a new EP and he has things to say.

Amusai: The New EP

Amusai is the name of the area in Adabraka where he was born — a neighborhood named after a school, the Assemblies of God compound that also housed the school, a place he associates with rap battles, watching the area girls, and sharing clothes among friends because nobody had much. Naming the EP after it was easy. He loves where he is from, he loves singing about himself and where he comes from, and he does not do fiction.

The project has six songs. The first is an intro. Freedom and Justice is a message to the government — he is a citizen and he has the right to say when things are not right. He gives a shout-out to Nkrumah: look at the lights we use, the motorway, the schools, and then ask whether we are being honest about who built this country. Back in 95 is a hip-hop track about growing up in the era when the neighborhood was known for certain things — criminality, drug dealing, the big names that came from that side of Accra. He knew some of those people. They were generous and they loved to look fly. He does not judge. Blame is a slow nineties R&B love song — if you are not willing to help me become better, he says, I go back to the old me. And Gellis is afrobeats, a word that means somebody girls love. The EP is autobiographical, a buffet of styles, and entirely him.

The Origin of 55

It was Papi who wanted to do music. He had grown up drawing — he and Bulldog met because they both drew — and that shared skill led to them beginning to record together in 2002 and 2003. When they needed a singer, Papi brought in Killy, a boy from the neighborhood who was known for playing football. Papi and Killy started first. Bulldog brought Gino later, around 2008, someone he knew from Charterhouse.

The name 55 came from 50/50 — the equal sharing of what they had musically with their fans. They took the zeros off and wrote it as 5 then 5. When people started saying fifty-five out loud they had to find a way to make both the number and the concept visible so they wrote the five and spelled it. Killy sang, Papi rapped. Someone had to sing and Papi made the calculation: if I sing, all the girls will come to me and I will not be able to manage. Make Killy sing.

African Girls, Mujaya, and the VGMAs

After recording an early song called For Better For Worse and remixing it, Bulldog made a connection with Aus. A butter trade was arranged — Aus gave them a beat, they gave him a song. Bulldog brought the African Girls beat home one day while Papi was there. He wrote the chorus and his verse in fifteen to twenty minutes, had his friend Jojo sing part of it, helped Killy with his section. That was the song.

He was not entirely surprised when it hit the way it did, because he had always written in English, always had a cinematic ambition for his words, always felt the music was bigger than just Ghana. He had added French himself because he had been picking up a little French and wanted to sound different. The song still trends on TikTok fifteen years later. If social media had existed when it dropped, he says, it would have gone everywhere immediately. People hear the song today and do not even know who is behind it because 55 has been away for so long.

Mujaya, when it came, was bigger. He recorded it out of pocket — took his own money, Killy's money, some money his father sent from Belgium — and brought it back to Bulldog without telling him they had been in the studio. They printed CDs and went to distribute them at Legon campus, using the girls they knew to pass them around. By the time Bulldog heard the song it was already picking up.

The two VGMA wins — Discovery of the Year and Pop Song of the Year — came the same night. The whole of Adabraka was on television watching them. The crowd was unanimous. The girls were shouting Papi. He was so overwhelmed that he said you voted for me instead of you voted for us. He still has a video of it on his TikTok.

The Bulldog Years: Seven Years, No Salary

The contract was seven years. No monthly salary. Money came only when shows happened and the group got paid. In the lean periods Papi survived on God, he says, and on a few loyal friends who remain nameless in his life but not in his loyalty.

The breaking point came on a video shoot day at the Dome, where the food that had been sent from the house was being given to the video girls instead of to the artists who had been there since morning. Papi said nothing in public — he respected Bulldog as an elder brother — but he left and did not return for two years. Bulldog came to his house looking for him. Papi's mother said he was not around. When he did eventually come back, it was to serve out the remaining years of the contract, record Mujaya without Bulldog's knowledge, and bring it back to him as a fait accompli. After the contract ran its course the group dispersed, not with a single dramatic moment but through drift — excuses from this one, silence from that one, nobody willing to put money in.

He tried to revive things around 2014 and again around 2022 when he came back to work with Bulldog briefly. That second attempt ended when the royalty dispute went public. He had not known that Bulldog had put the group's music onto streaming platforms — Apple Music, Spotify, others — without their knowledge or permission. He found out when he tried to register the songs himself and a distributor told him they were already claimed. When they sat and discussed it calmly behind closed doors, Bulldog acknowledged fault and they began working out how to settle it. Then Bulldog went on Kafui Dey's show and said publicly that Shatawali made him famous and VIP made him money, not mentioning 55 in the context it deserved. And a call came from a friend in Belgium who had seen the clip.

Papi's position is simple and clear: Shatawali was already famous when he came to 55. VIP was already VIP. The only group either of them came to because of the work that group had done from scratch, with no resources, was 55. If you go for interviews and do not mention the name of the people who actually built the thing, it is not gratitude — it is erasure. He still has not received a cedi from the streaming monetization of Mujaya. The group is dispersed. The matter ended when he and Bulldog stopped talking.

On Shata Wale

He speaks about him with unconditional respect. Shatawali showed him something that got him going — showed him that there is money to be made if you do this and this and this, was specific and generous with ideas, kept pushing him to come back to recording. When Papi felt like giving up, he would look at Shatawali's comeback and think: if he can go away for ten years and come back to rule, what is my excuse?

He calls the SM fan base one of the most loyal and committed fanbases he has ever seen. He does not need to be on the album to be motivated. The motivation from watching how Shatawale operates is enough on its own. He also says plainly: we need somebody to lead. Not everyone can be the leader. If Shatawali has been given the touch to lead, let him lead. The egos that fight leadership based on pride rather than talent are, in his view, nonsense egos.

Growing Up: Adabraka, Single Mother, an Absent Father

He was born in Adabraka, in the same house his mother was born in. His parents divorced when he was about five. His father left for the Netherlands and later Belgium. His mother's heart was broken. Her own mother died around that time. His stepdad eventually left too. She was a young woman trying to hold things together with a hair salon she owned at twenty, two daughters and a son in the middle.

He remembers one day when there was nothing to eat and his mother cooked rice with only pepper and no tomato, and cried. He was a child consoling her, telling her not to cry, that it was okay, that he was fine, even as he was almost sick himself from the pepper.

His mother is his hero. Every day is Mother's Day for him. When she is sick he cries because he feels he has not done enough. She is the only person he cries for. She is the one who watched him get his first tattoo. She is the one who sat him down when he said he wanted to do music and asked him to give her a freestyle — he could not do it, he just knew he wanted to do the thing but had not yet figured out how. Later she would sit and watch his interviews and tell him whether he did great or not.

His father reappeared when Papi was in JHS, staying at St. George's Hotel near the school. He went to see him and found a girl on the bed. He never told his mother. He keeps secrets. His father later moved to Belgium and would call him sometimes through Ghanaian women in the neighborhood who knew both of them. He did send money at the time of Mujaya's recording — a contribution to the song that Papi acknowledges and is grateful for. They do not speak much now. He has not spoken to him properly in a long time.

He is the only boy, sandwiched between an older sister and a younger one. Being surrounded by women, he says, is exactly why he loves women. He is middle child, he is pumped.

Primary School, Cartoons, and the Art of Escaping

Castle Road Methodist Primary, which became Calvary Methodist. School closed at twelve noon and he would run home to watch ThunderCats on GTV. Sometimes the teachers beat him for it. Sometimes he was not there long enough to be caught. When they started catching him regularly he would disappear to the mango plantation near the museum and work there for the day instead. He does not like school. He still thinks the syllabus wastes people's time. His favorite subjects were English and social studies. He cannot stand mathematics.

After primary and JHS he was meant to go to Keta State College. He submitted the forms. He showed up on the first day. At four or five in the afternoon, when the school went quiet, he picked up his bag and left by a side path. He did not go back. His mother tried art school next — Ultimate School of Art in Mroy, where both he and Bulldog attended and discovered each other through drawing. He left that too after about a year. He spent time in Benin, visiting friends and relatives, going for two or three months at a time. He was in his early twenties, moving by instinct, going wherever his spirit said to go.

The Tattoos

His first tattoo was a cross with a rag on it. He got it in front of his mother. He had not eaten, because he likes to go through the pain on an empty stomach. He almost fainted. His mother asked someone to buy him minerals.

He has a guardian angel on his arm — female, not yet named, though he is thinking of giving her his mother's name: Joyce Kujo. He has a studio microphone on his right hand side because that is the work he does. He has 55 somewhere, faded now and needing to be covered over. He has guitar imagery. He has Papy the King written out in letters. He has his mother's name on his chest with her birth year. He has a flower, a kiss, a Chinese inscription for money power respect, an anchor, an all-seeing eye, a heart with a heartbeat, and two fish.

He watches the needle go in while it is happening. He does not look away. If there is a mistake, he does not pay. But his tattoo man is good enough that mistakes do not happen. He wants to add his mother's portrait on his back. He is still waiting for the right moment.

What 55 Gave Ghana Music

They were pacesetters. They brought the reggae-infused sound of African Girls before that sound was a defined genre. They brought the piano-driven slow jam of Mujaya before that kind of song was common in Ghanaian popular music. They do things ahead of time. Years later people start doing what they were doing. He is doing the same with this EP — songs that people will begin to imitate later.

He thinks the group failed not because of success but because of selfishness. He was the one investing, he was the one who could not stop talking on interviews while the others stayed quiet, he was the one holding the dream together. It was heavy but enjoyable because the dream was already in him — performing in front of ten thousand people was a vision he had carried since childhood, and 55 was the vehicle for it.

He misses them. He would bring them back if he had the money to invest. He would. But he is done chasing people who make excuses when the work needs doing.

The Industry's Hard Truth

When he speaks about the music industry the language becomes fierce. Fake. Liars. Demons. He means the ones who have wronged artists, spoiled talent, blocked careers, taken royalties, stopped musicians from earning from their own work. When you mess with somebody's talent, he says, that is their food. Nature and karma will find you. He does not say this as a threat — he says it as a principle.

His advice to artists entering the business is plain: learn to read contracts. Some of them sign their own death sentences and do not know it. Management only cares about you when you are popping. When the hit song is gone, you are a liability. He is now his own record label — Own Records — and answering to nobody.