The album kicks off with the addictive ‘Modern Ghanaians’. An upbeat number introduced with King Ayisoba’s distinctive two-stringed guitar. King Ayisoba has gone from homeless to hiplife star in the space of a few years, adding a bit of credibility and a good story to a talented artist with one foot in the traditional and one in the most modern.

The various strands and influences of hiplife are writ large across the fourteen tracks, from hip hop to ragga. The super sexy ‘My Body’ is definitely in the latter camp with the confident tones of the ladies Triple M and the Nigerian ex-pat Tony Harmony producing a slick bit of dancehall as if Chaka Demus and Pliers were recording an album in Accra.

The now near-legendary Batman Samini with his exhortation to ‘Do Something’ (before you die) shows his progressive side (after his controversial hit ‘Linda’ caused a stir when he admitted it was about how he liked to ‘sex my girl’). He makes another appearance on his rival Tic Tac’s ‘Kangaroo’ a joyful - if not a bit silly - number which celebrates how he may wobble but he will never fall down.

While not exhorting anyone to be a better person, the fast-paced ‘Oldman Boogey’ tells the tragi-comic true story of one of the rappers who had been dating a girl for a long time when a rich but older American showed interest in her. They made a pact to fleece the old guy but to the rapper’s chagrin the girl actually ended up in love with the old guy. ‘Oluma aletse kakpe’ (an old man is always a wider man) as they say.

‘Fuck all day, fuck all night’, the charmingly obscene ‘Toto Mechanic’ instructs us in what the liner notes promise is as yet Ghana’s sole contribution to electro.

Jon Lusk, writing about this album on the BBC’s site asks why anyone would choose Ghanaian hiplife over ragga or hip hop. He concludes that it is unlikely to cross over and while that may be true it is not the point. This is about being young, Ghanaian and if it crosses over to other parts of Africa through MTV Base that will be a bonus. What Europeans make of it is unlikely to trouble many of these artists.

If you are looking for deep, or deeply traditional, this is not the album for you. Just as dancehall in Jamaica took advantage of the newly cheap technology of the time to let a whole new generation of people onto the scene as musicians, hiplife is that punk DIY ethic for West Africa. Much of it may flower and disappear quickly but there will be gems and some of them are on this album.