Big week for Hip Hop with Kanyé entering Forbes' Halls. That too done only as West would—with inevitable color.

A couple of thoughts on some of what may be seen from this, and could possibly portend for Hip Hop in Africa and Zambia.

There aren't secrets to this really.

The formula is as old as cement;

Find a market, sell it a product, scale, scale, scale. Consolidate and possibly diversify.

Hip Hop was born as a tool of expression for a culture. Over time, it has morphed into several different things.

The business of it was possibly an outgrowth of its considerably large audience. I'm not stating fact with this, merely opining.

Get an audience large enough and someone with business sense to meet, something is going to be sold, sooner or later.

Thus came Hip Hop 'Cash Kings'.

The product in this instance was the culture; a lifestyle with such appeal monetizing was almost an inevitability.

Diddy was the embodiment of cool at a time he had demographics literally wanting to be all things Diddy, so he gave them the Diddy experience with Sean Jean.

Jay had a fanbase that would jump into an ocean of mortal hazards if they heard him say it was cool to do. Champagne brands thought they could benefit from that influence & did—until he realized he could do this for himself.

In a word, acquire influence and cross appeal, profit.

Important to say that Hip Hop as a culture of note is barely 3 decades old. That's fairly young.

However, such has been its proliferation it enjoys global ubiquity. There's power to that.

Where that culture meets a growing urbane lifestyle, opportunity for profit.

Africa has an increasing amount of much of what has permitted Hip Hop's growth.

And we are witnessing local artists starting to benefit from that; Cassper Nyovest, Kiernan Forbes (AKA to you), a slew of them from Nigeria, Ghana etc.

Baby steps for sure. Steps nonetheless.

Guess some of the big questions around this are the extent to which artists can hone their music to widen reach beyond borders (numbers matter and most of our economies are small) and how they could garner the brand appeal necessary to monetize.

The one doesn't follow the other.

The Blueprint has been given, the devil will lie in its execution.

Congratulations Kanyé, once again.

We really should have watched the throne.