There have been serious heated arguments around the globe as to whether the Barack song by Blakk Rasta recently endorsed by Barack Obama, when he visited Ghana, is pro-Obama or anti-Obama.

This is why it has become necessary to explain exactly what the lyrics of the song mean.

Barack Obama by Blakk Rasta is written is a Shakespearean literature style full of synecdoches and satires.

It’s down to the wire for Emcee Africa II’s five finalists when the ultimate battle takes place on Saturday 25 July and DStv audiences in Botswana will get to catch the action live as they perform live.

South Africa’s Maraza, Ghana’s C-Real, Botswana’s Cibil Nyte, Kenya’s Point Blank and Nigeria’s Black Jeez will be given one last chance to impress the judges at Gaborone’s Fashion Lounge at an event that’s open to the public.

The judges are the who’s who of African hip-hop and they will decide which two finalists have the skills to take on Botswana’s Zeus in a one-on-one battle which will eventually decide who will wear the Emcee Africa II crown.

The global economic crisis has hit Africa’s commodity revenues and foreign investment but one of the continent’s greatest resources is still neglected and even repressed: the creative talents of its songwriters, composers, and bands.

Unchained, they could create domestic and export wealth--and a lot of fun.

Take Ghana. From Highlife to Hiplife, Ghanaian sounds fill dance floors all over the continent.

Indeed, Prof John Collins of the School of Performing Arts at the University Ghana estimates its music could generate US$53 million a year from foreign sales. And Ghana did pass a strong copyright law in 2005, although it still has not been fully implemented.

Sister Fa is Senegal’s Queen of hip-hop. But to get there wasn’t an easy road  - as a woman trying to break through in an almost exclusively male field within a male-dominated society was a struggle.  Struggle breeds compassion, and Sister Fa uses her international album debut 'Sarabah - Tales from the Flipside of Paradise' to speak out against the injustices rampant in her native country.

Warm, groovy and unmistakably African, her raps, in Wolof, Manding, Jola and French, roll elegantly over beats as well as traditional instruments (kora and djembe), delivering tracks far removed from rap clichés, and more influenced by 80s Old Skool hip-hop than current Western forms of hip-hop.

From the very beginning of her career, Sister Fa has dedicated herself to fight the wide-spread practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) in her country:  "It’s an operation that can kill - I’ve seen dead babies with my own eyes.  We need to fight against this practice at all costs and get rid of it forever. But it is quite a complex problem.  It’s a practice that has been around for some 3000 years - I myself am a victim."