Lord Ekomy Ndong

Ekomy Ndong Mba Meyong, who would be known to the world by his stage name, Lord Ekomy Ndong, has been a leading voice in the African hip hop scene since 1990, when he founded the Gabonese group Movaizhaleine.

Throughout his two-decade-long career, Lord Ekomy has been known as a pan-African activist driven by the culture and history of the world’s second-largest continent. Throughout his career, Lord Ekomy has collaborated with leading voices in the urban scene of Gabon and Africa.

Movaizhaleine’s 1999 debut album, Mission Mbeng, became a huge success in Libreville, the Gabonese capital.

In 2009, on the eve of the controversial presidential elections in Gabon, Ekomy released the singles 300, 809 and Engongol, denouncing electoral processes in Africa while also raising questions about French Africa and African independence.

Ekomy is once again finding himself at the centre of a political hotbed with the first single off his 11th studio album, Ibogaine. The song, Questoins Noires, is an open letter to Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, taking on the “cumbersome military presence of France” on the black continent, and Sarkozy’s infamous speech on African relations in Dakar, Senegal, in 2007.

“My hip hop music is African in sound, it’s from someone who wonders, tries to understand and thinks about his life, his background, his identity, his culture, his relationship with the rest of the world,” he says.

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