‘Music is proper business’ – Sarkodie
A question that many musicians have quietly bristled at for years has finally drawn a loud, public response, and it came from one of Ghana’s biggest names in music.
Sarkodie took to Facebook to call out what he described as a dismissive and insulting line of questioning directed at people in the creative industry, specifically, the suggestion embedded in the phrase “apart from music, what proper business do you do?”
“That question ‘apart from music, what business do you do? Like, a proper business?’ honestly comes off as a bit insulting. Music is actually one of the biggest industries in the world, and in many cases, it’s just as serious (if not more) than what people like to call ‘proper businesses.’ At the end of the day, investing in a music career is a real business decision. Like any other venture, it has its risks, but it can also be highly rewarding if approached the right way,” he wrote.
The post landed at a moment when Ghana’s music industry is arguably more globally visible than it has ever been, generating revenue, employment and international recognition that extend well beyond what the question implies. Yet the perception that music sits somewhere below “real” business in terms of legitimacy has proven stubborn, a bias Sarkodie’s remarks have now thrust into open debate online, drawing strong agreement from others within the creative space.
The rapper himself is something of a living rebuttal to the assumption. Over the course of his career, Sarkodie has built a brand that reaches into endorsements and entrepreneurship, demonstrating precisely the kind of structured, scalable business thinking the critics seem to assume is absent from music.
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