Kofi and the Rap Battle Summer

This is a hugely enjoyable novel about music and growing up black in London in the early nineties. Eleven-year-old Kofi is an attractive central character, partly for the qualities that get him into trouble at school. He’s restless, naturally creative, with an eye on the main chance and an irrepressible sense of humour. Life on an estate, his family and friendships, and ways he finds to enjoy himself in the city and keep himself safe, all have an authentic ring to them. Sometimes the description is so precise, that you are tempted to believe Jeffrey Boakye is drawing on first-hand experience, including how to fool a video machine into thinking you have put in fifty pence, when you have really created a fake ‘sandwich’ of just the right weight from a penny, a five pence piece, and some chewing gum, More possible evidence of first- hand experience comes in the musical side of the tale, where the kids’ ‘Cuss Battles’ behind the school refectory are not only an outlet for creativity but a way of establishing status in the male school community, sometimes at the expense of those on the receiving end of the cusses. This is an arena where you feel the author would have excelled. In the story, the battles are not only a way for Kofi’s quiet friend Kelvin to make his mark and find a life changing talent but for the pair of them to take a rudimentary step into publishing, selling a homemade magazine that begins by anthologising the best curses. Kofi has his personal challenges, including betraying Kelvin at one point, and feeling responsible for an incident with the police in which his uncle is arrested, but his good heart is never in doubt, and finally, with the help of his family, he is persuaded to sort out his life. He even returns the money he has made on video game tournaments to the owner of the machines he has cheated. This is a novel that irrepressibly looks on the bright side. Even the cuss battles evolve into rap circles that celebrate community not cruelty. And how I hope that, in real life, the Mini cab owner who ran the video machines really would let Kofi keep the money, as a recognition of his skill as an entrepreneur.