It all began in 2007 when Asem popped onto the Ghanaian music scene, presumably out of nowhere, with his hit song ‘Gimme Blow’. What seemed at the time as a lucky strike by a newbie, turned out to be the beginning of what would become the biggest and most prolific record label Ghana would see for the next 15 years. Behind this powerhouse artiste was the then 21-year-old, Richie Mensah. Richie took the success he achieved with Asem and turned it into the label we know today as Lynx Entertainment. On that label, he released his own records including Frema and Yaaro, both of which were big hit songs in the 2000s. Over the next few years, Richie would go on to produce some of the biggest songs for both new and veteran artistes including; VIP, Obour, Tinny, Okyeame Kwame, Sway, Zigi and many more. In telling the story of Lynx, the timeline can be broken down into three generations; The Pioneers, The Momentum and The Peak.
The Pioneers
The first generation of Lynx Entertainment was the early years where the two collaborators, Asem & Richie put out hits consistently. They were the pioneers of the label and built the foundation on which the future of the label would come to rest. For context, in 2009 when Asem was arguably the biggest artiste in the country, Sarkodie was just winning his first Ghana Music Award for New Artiste of the Year. Richie Mensah’s ‘You Know The Name Right?’ producer tag was on a majority of hit songs that you heard on radio. These pioneers had such a chokehold on the Ghanaian music industry that it is impossible to talk of the history of Ghana music without mentioning them. Let’s not forget the power you had to wield in music at the time for R2Bees and the rest of the exploding Tema music scene to find you worth having a music beef with. These two built the label and got it to a point where it was untouchable enough to experiment with new artists. Thus came the birth of the second generation.
The Momentum
One or two artistes thriving on a record label can be chalked off to luck. But when you churn out hit artiste after hit artiste, year after year, it becomes difficult to argue with the genius and skill that requires. That was exactly what happened when Lynx gained momentum with the signing of new artists like OJ Blaq, Zigi and Eazzy. With different musical styles and sounds that were not at the time familiar in the music scene, each of these artists had hit songs on heavy rotation all over the country. At this time, there was no record label that had a full roster of artistes making ways consistently in the country. The more success these artistes got for their songs; a lot of which were co-written by Richie and almost all of which were produced by him; the more established artistes came to the Lynx studios for their own hit songs produced by Richie. In an attempt to diversify the label and bring in more female artistes, Lynx made the decision to create a girl group; D3. After a moderately successful debut song, the group disbanded due to personal reasons, only leaving one artist still at the label and excited to keep going. She would be the one to kick off the third generation of Lynx.
The Peak
After D3 broke up, the young female artiste, MzVee, stayed on to pursue this dream of becoming the biggest female artist in the country. Right out of the gate, her first solo song which featured veteran musician and member of VIP, Lazzy; was a hit. At this time; a lot of the older generation artistes had matured and moved on either out of music or to be on their own. This gave the label the ability to invest its resources and capacity into MzVee. She would go on to become the biggest female artiste in the country for many years until Ebony would show up on the scene. In 2016, Lynx Entertainment partnered with Charterhouse to become the official record label for the winner of the Hitmaker music talent show. The winner that year was a talented male vocalist named KiDi. The next year, though the Hitmaker partnership had gone to Kaywa’s Highly Spiritual Label, Richie spotted a talented artiste on the show. This artiste who would come in third at the competition, was Kuami Eugene and he was the next artiste signed to Lynx. 2017 was a pivotal year in Ghana music for many reasons. One of them being that it was the year that many people consider as the passing of the torch from the reigning superstars at the time Shatta Wale, Sarkodie and Stonebwoy to the new generation of the Ghanaian music industry; KiDi, Kuami Eugene, King Promise and Kwesi Arthur. Once again Lynx as a label, was at the forefront of the music industry because it had two of the biggest and bankable stars in the industry. Over the next few years after that; The artistes will go on to achieve every feat possible in the Ghanaian music industry including the ultimate Artiste of the Year award which KiDi won in 2022.
The Next Generation
At a peak of this nature, it was evident what was going to happen next. Lynx had never been ones to rest on their laurels and they were going to find and build the next stars. Over the last year, a few artistes have released singles under the label with moderate attention. But on Thursday January 19, 2023, the new generation of the label was introduced together with the release of a song titled ‘Forever’. However, it was the accompanying ‘movie’ that represented the kind of impact that Lynx is looking to make with these new talents. The four new acts of the next generation are BoiJake, st. Lennon, DSL and Maya Blu. However, as an epilogue to the ‘movie’, another name, Kasar, was revealed to be the next artiste to get on the label. This is going to be the first time in a long time that Lynx has had more than 3 artistes on the label at the same time and it is going to be an interesting journey to watch.
As the music industry has seen drastic changes in the last few years since the pandemic, we will have to wait to find out if Richie Mensah and Lynx Entertainment still has what it takes to make stars after 15 years of doing it. We will be here to see what the next 15 years look like.
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