There is something peculiarly Ghanaian about the way we build our heroes only to watch them crumble with a mixture of pity and perverse satisfaction.
Emmanuel Kwesi Danso Arthur Junior, the boy from Tema Community 9 who once swept floors at a recording studio in exchange for studio time, has become the latest exhibit in our national museum of squandered potential.
And I am particularly intrigued by his story, because the artist known on the music scene simply as Kwesi Arthur, is one of the few hip-hop acts from Ghana that have held my attention.
And whilst one hesitates to dance on the grave of a career that may yet have a pulse, the vital signs are not encouraging.
At the time of writing, Kwesi Arthur commands approximately 316,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. To contextualise this figure: Black Sherif, the man who has effectively usurped Arthur’s position as Ghana’s leading young voice in hip-hop, boasts over 2.2 million. That is not a gap; it is a chasm. It is the Grand Canyon of Ghanaian music, and Kwesi Arthur is standing on the wrong side of it, shouting into the wind about food reviews.
The anatomy of a rise
To understand how far Kwesi Arthur has fallen, one must first appreciate how high he soared.
Sometime in 2017, when “Grind Day” burst onto the scene with the force of a cultural earthquake, it felt like witnessing the birth of something genuinely new. Here was a young man who had reportedly worked for a single day as a security guard before deciding that destiny had grander plans.
The remix, featuring Sarkodie and Medikal was his coronation as the “young cat” to rule the scene.
By 2018, Kwesi Arthur had achieved what many Ghanaian artists spend entire careers chasing: a BET nomination. He became the first Ghanaian to be nominated for the Viewer’s Choice Best New International Act category, a feat that galvanised the nation in a display of unity rarely seen outside of football matches. The industry rallied behind him, from Sarkodie to Shatta Wale and his arch-rival, Stonebwoy, the whole pantheon of Ghanaian music royalty was in a collective effort that bordered on the touching.
He lost to South African artist Sjava, but in the peculiar arithmetic of Ghanaian pride, the nomination alone felt like victory.
By 2019, his EP “Live from Nkrumah Krom Vol II” was garnering millions of streams in its first week. He won Rapper of the Year at the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards. He collaborated with Stormzy. Cardi B co-signed him. The trajectory was vertical, and the destination appeared to be the stratosphere.
The album that took forever
Then came the wait. From 2020 to 2022, Kwesi Arthur largely disappeared from public view, ostensibly labouring over his debut album. “Son of Jacob” was meant to be his magnum opus, the definitive statement of an artist at the peak of his powers.
When it finally arrived in April 2022, a full five years after “Grind Day”, it landed with the cultural impact of a stone dropped into an ocean.
The 15-track project featured impressive names: Joeboy, Adekunle Gold, M Huncho, Vic Mensa, Teni. The production was polished. The themes of family and struggle were quintessentially Kwesi. But something fundamental had shifted in the Ghanaian music landscape during those years of silence, and “Son of Jacob” arrived to find that the throne it was meant to claim had already been occupied.
Enter the “villain”
Mohammed Ismail Sherif, Black Sherif to the world, emerged in 2021 with “First Sermon” and “Second Sermon” like a force of nature that refused to wait for permission.
Whilst Kwesi Arthur was perfecting his album in comfortable obscurity, Blacko was releasing music with the urgency of a man who understood that momentum, once lost, is nearly impossible to recapture. Almost reminiscent of what Asake did on the Nigerian music scene, back to back hits and back to back capturing of attention.
When Black Sherif released “Kwaku the Traveller” in March 2022, just one month before “Son of Jacob” dropped, it reached number one on both the Ghanaian and Nigerian Apple Music charts. The song became the first hip-hop track to debut at number one on the TurnTable Top 50 chart in Nigeria.
By October 2022, Black Sherif’s debut album “The Villain I Never Was” had debuted at number 12 on the Billboard World Albums chart.
The contrast was brutal. Here was an artist four years younger than Kwesi Arthur, with none of his industry connections or established fan base, utterly dominating the conversation. Black Sherif won the BET Award for Best International Act that had eluded Arthur. He became Spotify’s most-streamed Ghanaian artist. He performed at the MOBO Awards, Wireless Festival, and headline concerts that sold out across continents.
“Half of Kwesi Arthur’s album was Afrobeats, but Blacko’s tape was hip-hop, but it still did way better than Son of Jacob did.”
Music critic Fyronic on X
The alleged beef that never was – or was it?
Here is where the narrative becomes particularly instructive. In 2022, a snippet of a collaboration between Black Sherif, Kwesi Arthur, and Bigg Hommie Flee titled “Alhamdulillah” leaked online. Fans were ecstatic. The song never materialised.
According to Kwesi Arthur, speaking in March 2024, the song was leaked and subsequently felt “old” to both parties. “We’ve both had the conversation about it and we both felt like it’s old,” he explained. He also described the rumours of beef between himself and Black Sherif as “stupid,” recounting how he had personally recorded Sherif at his studio before “Second Sermon” had made him a star.
But the streets tell a different story. Music critic Fyronic’s viral analysis of Black Sherif’s “Where Dem Boyz” from his 2025 album “Iron Boy” argues that the song is less about Shatta Wale, as widely assumed, and more about a fallout with Kwesi Arthur and their mutual associate Bigg Hommie Flee alongside Peter Famiyeh Bozah. The theory suggests that Arthur felt threatened by Flee’s attention to the emerging star, leading to a rupture that has never been publicly acknowledged or resolved.
Kwesi Arthur’s own “Pain Interlude” from 2023, with its pointed lyrics about “big homies turned to bitch homies” and “friends turned to foes,” was widely interpreted as a shot at Flee. Arthur later apologised publicly for the song, a rare admission that gave credence to the speculation.
Compounding these interpersonal tensions was Kwesi Arthur’s very public departure from Ground Up Chale, the management company and label that had nurtured his career from obscurity.
In 2022, Arthur took to Twitter with a cryptic warning: “If I keep quiet, so many other artistes in the position I was go be taken advantage of.“
The details have never been fully disclosed, but the pattern is familiar.
According to DJ Slim, who claims privileged insight into the situation, the label’s handling of Arthur’s career created lasting damage. Other artists who have passed through Ground Up, Quamina MP, Twitch, Kofi Mole and more recently Lalid, have expressed similar grievances.
“If I tell you how I struggled after Ground Up fucked me up you go talk no be true talk,” Lalid wrote on X in October 2025, adding yet another voice to the chorus of discontent.
Arthur himself has admitted that 2022 would have been the moment to quit, had he been so inclined. “When you leave the system everything is brand new for you,” he told 3Music TV. “Fortunately for me, I still kept pushing.”
The question is: pushing towards what?
The Davido debacle
If there was a moment that crystallised the narrative of Kwesi Arthur’s decline, it came in November 2023 at Davido’s A.W.A.Y Festival in Atlanta. Videos from his performance showed a sparse crowd, an artist singing at a tempo so low that the audience appeared to be dispersing before his set concluded.
The response was merciless.
Social media erupted with claims that Arthur had “fallen off,” that his career was functionally over, that the new generation of artists had rendered him obsolete. A blogger’s criticism prompted Arthur to threaten him via direct message, “You don’t want to be found. Don’t play“, which led to an actual police complaint.
Arthur’s public response was defiant but telling: “I see y’all comments. Even if there were 2 people in the arena I would have still performed. I go need y’all to shove your opinions up your ass.” This was not the confident bravado of an artist at the peak of his powers; this was a man under siege.
This Is Not the Tape III (but it might as well be the epitaph)
In March 2024, Kwesi Arthur released “This Is Not the Tape III,” a nine-track EP through a new distribution deal with Tieme Music. The project was positioned as evidence of his continued relevance, proof that the fallen-off narrative was premature.
The reception was underwhelming. Whilst industry figures like Baba Sadiq Abdulai Abu acknowledged the release, he also publicly expressed “dissatisfaction with Kwesi Arthur’s trajectory” and encouraged the musician to “ramp up his motivation.”
In my opinion, such tepid endorsements from allies do more damage than criticism from enemies.
Meanwhile, Black Sherif continued his ascent. His 2025 album “Iron Boy” became the first Ghanaian release to spend two full weeks on Apple Music’s US Top 50 chart. It set a record for most streams in a day for a Ghanaian album on Spotify, garnering 2 million streams in 24 hours. He embarked on sold-out tours of North America and Europe. He received a nomination for the 2025 BET Awards, the only Ghanaian on the list.
The food influencer pivot
Which brings us to the present, and to the spectacle of a BET-nominated rapper reviewing restaurants on TikTok.
In mid-2025, Kwesi Arthur began posting food content on social media, visiting Accra-based restaurants and sharing his culinary experiences with his followers. The reaction was swift and savage. Fans accused him of abandoning music, of having nothing left to offer, of confirming through his actions what they had long suspected: the fire was out.
“Some of you have decided to be very evil and nasty about it in my comments,” Arthur responded in a video that went viral for all the wrong reasons. “Some people have gone to the extent of being like, oh, I hope he goes broke and he starts eating gari, so he can give us the type of music he used to give us.“
He warned his detractors in no uncertain terms: “If you think you can threaten me, you’re wasting your time. I’m not the artiste you do that to. I’ve struggled before—poverty is no longer my portion.” He threatened to block persistent critics or meet their insults with equally harsh responses.
Again, not the language of an artist secure in his position. This is the language of someone fighting a rearguard action against the encroaching darkness brought on by a fall from the hiphop throne.
In fairness to Kwesi Arthur, his defenders make valid points.
The Ghanaian music industry is notoriously unforgiving, quick to elevate and even quicker to discard. The economics of music in Ghana, particularly hip-hop, are brutal; as spoken-word artist turned podcaster Mutombo noted in discussing Arthur’s food reviews, “Music alone doesn’t pay, especially in Ghana.”
There is also the argument that Arthur has never truly disappeared. He has released music consistently, even during his supposed hiatus. He has collaborated with respectable names. He has maintained a presence, even if that presence has dimmed considerably.
And Black Sherif himself has publicly expressed admiration for Arthur. “I love Kwesi Arthur so much, I wish he knew,” he tweeted in December 2023. When Arthur was facing the worst of the online abuse, Sherif sent an emotional message of support that temporarily warmed the hearts of both fan bases.
But sympathy does not translate to streams, and goodwill does not fill concert venues.
Is Kwesi Arthur’s career truly up in flames? The honest answer is that the flames, if not fully engulfing, are certainly licking at the walls.
Consider the trajectory, from unity-bringing national treasure to a man threatening critics in their DMs.
The comparison with Black Sherif is inevitable and instructive. Both emerged from humble beginnings. Both possessed genuine talent. Both faced industry challenges. But whilst Black Sherif maintained relentless momentum, releasing music, touring, building, never allowing the conversation to move on without him, Kwesi Arthur retreated. He took years to deliver an album that was meant to be definitive but arrived feeling dated. He cut off allies, feuded publicly and privately, and responded to criticism with hostility rather than artistry.
The saddest aspect is that Kwesi Arthur’s talent was never in question. Listen to “Grind Day” today and it still slaps. His voice, his flow, his ability to channel the aspirations and frustrations of Tema’s streets, these were real gifts, recognised internationally before Black Sherif had even released his first song.
But talent, in the absence of execution, is merely potential. And potential, as any football scout will tell you, has an expiration date.
Kwesi Arthur is thirty years old, soon to be thirty-one. In the grand scheme of things, this is not ancient. Comebacks happen. Careers have been resurrected from far deeper graves. Shatta Wale did it when he rose again from Bandana’s grave even though some may argue that Bandana’s career was never dead. But for Kwesi Arthur, such resurrections require something that has been conspicuously absent from Arthur’s recent output: a body of work so undeniable that it forces the conversation to shift.
Until then, we are left with a cautionary tale, a warning about what happens when the grind that gave you your breakthrough fails to continue. Emmanuel Kwesi Danso Arthur Junior once swept studio floors for the chance to record music. Perhaps it is time to find that hunger again.
Because the alternative, reviewing jollof rice whilst the crown you were meant to wear sits comfortably on another man’s head, is a fate no artist should accept without a fight.
The question is not whether Kwesi Arthur can rise again. The question is whether he still wants to.