Mike-E Switches the Flow
As he Connects Hip-hop to the Continent
By Linda A. Annan                                                                      

He is realigning the perspective of Hip-hop analysts. He contends the point has been missed – that before break dancers, emcees and graffitis on New York City trains were Aesop Fables which “predate Slick Rick's stories.” He is here to take Hip-hop back to its roots, and by this he means his birth place, Ethiopia and Africa as a whole, where the history of traditional rhythmic influence on any musical genre is simply incontrovertible.

Michael Ellison, born to African-American parents in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia , grips his connection to the country like no other. “My mother always raised me with this awareness and affinity for Ethiopia , always called me her African child, her Ethiopian child, and she'd say ‘this is where you're from,' and that gave me a tremendous sense of identity,” says Ellison.

With such palpable perception in his long-awaited album, AfroFlow, he attributes its inspiration to Fela Kuti and the development of Afrobeat. Another, he adds, was his bond to Ethiopia and a desire to learn more about the culture in its entirety to be able to integrate it into his music, which he seems to have done an excellent job of doing with AfroFlow.

“The literal translation [of AfroFlow] means ‘Flowing From Africa,' not just Hip-hop but as people we all flow from Africa and that was the real inspiration behind it,” he explicates.

Though he has created a few underground spoken-word CD and numerous materials in the past, this is his official debut. “Honestly I thank God because had I released something before it would probably not be reflective of my current perspective,” he says of the reason for the long wait.

Ethiopia and the continent are epicenters of this album, though the motivational words are also directed at the African-American community as a whole, a track of no alien to his artistic repertoire.

This all-around Detroit-based artist, widely known as Mike-E, has been noticed for his acting in independent films, commercials and theater productions. His spoken word performances on HBO series Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry and philanthropic activities all seem to have sculpted him into the artist he is today.

His reputation as a youth motivator and involvement in outreach programs and non-profit organizations in support of expanding the reach of health care to Ethiopians is evident in his creative work.

He attributes his association with philanthropy to some of the women in his life.

“My mother and my sister,” he says. “My mother for a long time was a nursery school teacher and just somebody who was always concerned with the well-being of others, whether it was extended family or friends.”

“Also my sister because she worked at a nursery school while she was going to school and then eventually she got into social work and just goes above and beyond in terms of her job and helping families. A big part of her job is helping immigrants transition to the U.S. , so those are early examples,” he adds and continues to say he has always been involved in some type of community project dating back to elementary school. His trips to Ethiopia , he admits, also inspired such assiduous commitment to these missions.

When asked what motivates him to be as active in charity as he is, his response is simply: “People. Just people going through it. People and the people taking care of the people are who inspire me.”

He then adds, “Really, what I do is make my best effort to support what I call ‘Proven Winners,' people who have proven themselves to be trustworthy and sincere, people who have proven themselves to be good and caring to others. We all have altruistic goals to do certain things when the reality is, there are people already doing it, they just need our support. We really need to ask ourselves honestly: ‘do we want to make a difference so we can be recognized as making a difference? Or do we want to make a difference as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

For a while, Ellison had independently created and performed to poems about the tobacco industry until an activist friend, Lisa Fager-Bediako, who had hired him to perform at events hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus, recommended him for a conference by the American Cancer Society.

“After performing at that conference we just developed a concept to use music and spoken-word as a platform to communicate some of the key messages of the American Cancer Society. And it was two sisters that were instrumental from the ACS, Rita Miller and Tatia Ash,” he says.

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