On 19 July 2019, Shatta Wale woke up with his name on a Beyoncé tracklist.
The Lion King: The Gift, the album Beyoncé curated to accompany Disney’s remake of The Lion King, included “Already”, a song credited to Beyoncé, Shatta Wale and Major Lazer. For a Ghanaian dancehall artist known at home for his feuds and his fanbase, the Shatta Movement, it was the biggest international platform he had ever had.
A Ghanaian producer in the room
The Ghanaian connection on the album ran through more than Shatta Wale. The producer GuiltyBeatz, from Ghana, worked on the project, and The Gift drew on artists from across Africa, including Burna Boy, Wizkid, Tiwa Savage, Mr Eazi and Yemi Alade from Nigeria, and South African and Cameroonian acts. Beyoncé described the album as a love letter to Africa.
“Already” was built on a dancehall and Afrobeats groove. Shatta Wale’s voice and patois-flavoured delivery sat right in the middle of it, and the track became one of the album’s most talked-about songs.
The reaction at home
Ghanaian social media exploded. Shatta Wale’s supporters treated the feature as vindication: an artist often dismissed as loud and controversial had been chosen by the biggest star in the world. His critics argued about whether he deserved it, and the debate over which Ghanaian artist best represents the country abroad started all over again.
The feature also reopened comparisons with Stonebwoy, his dancehall rival, which had been one of the fiercest in Ghanaian music.
Black Is King
A year later, on 31 July 2020, Beyoncé released Black Is King, a visual album based on The Gift, on Disney+. The “Already” video appeared as part of it and was also released on its own. It showed Beyoncé in striking settings, from treetops to an industrial warehouse, with sequences that nodded to African imagery. With his voice on the soundtrack of a Disney+ release, his name went round the world a second time.
What it meant
The feature did not turn Shatta Wale into an American star, but it changed his standing. At home, he used it as proof of his reach, and he has referred to working with Beyoncé many times since. Internationally, it introduced his voice to listeners who had never heard Ghanaian dancehall.
For Ghanaian music more broadly, “Already” joined a short list of moments when a Ghanaian artist appeared on a project by one of the world’s biggest stars. It remains the collaboration Shatta Wale’s fans bring up first in any argument about his career.
Shatta Wale had been calling himself the king of Ghanaian dancehall for years before “Already”. The Beyoncé credit is the one piece of evidence he never has to argue for.
