Until the beginning of this year, Norwegian rappers Nico Sereba and Vinz Dery were a Tupac-influenced hip-hop duo. Their career-changing strategy, which resulted in the chart-topping summer hit Am I Wrong, was to drop the rapping and make a feature of their African roots (Nico is Ivorian, Vinz Ghanaian), while retaining a European pop sensibility. Black Star Elephant is the resultant concoction, in which clubby Eurodisco bumps up against Afrobeat drumming and chanting, while the MCs dispense inspirational truisms along the lines of “People will always be people to me.” It’s extremely easy on the ear – Vinz’s baritone and Nico’s John Legendish tenor entwine so gracefully that it seems perverse that they didn’t focus on singing from the start. (A sample of Vinz’s MCing skills on Another Day recalls Will Smith in Fresh Prince mode; even when deploring poverty in Ghana, he’s as sunny as they come.) The unwavering positivism of this cultural mash-up is compelling; if only they’d resisted the urge to include “motivational” interludes spoken in the style of a tribal elder, which nudges the album into the cheese zone.
