Dr King SMADE on 3Music TV: Afrobeats, Ghana, and Building Cultural Infrastructure
Today, Friday 19th December, I sat down live on 3Music TV for a conversation that felt less like an interview and more like a grounding moment.
It was early and last-minute, the kind of call you answer without hesitation. Not because it is convenient, but because you understand who you serve. The culture. The community. The young people watching and quietly deciding whether their own ideas are worth backing.
Afro Nation came up early in the conversation, and I wanted to place it in the right context. It was never meant to be the destination. It was a proof point. A moment that showed what was possible when culture, timing, and belief align.
What has always mattered to me, and matters even more now, is what gets built around moments like that. The systems. The partnerships. The infrastructure that allows culture to last beyond one weekend, one platform, or one headline.
That perspective only comes from seeing the full picture.
Long before festivals, there were the unglamorous years. House parties that turned into club nights. Club nights that turned into tours. Tours that turned into concerts. Work that rarely gets documented. Hand-delivering tickets before social media made visibility easy. Putting posters up in the middle of the night. Building trust one relationship at a time. Believing in a future you could not yet prove.
That same lens is why Ghana mattered in 2019.
It was the Year of Return, and Ghana made a deliberate choice to open its doors. Not just symbolically, but structurally. Visa-on-arrival. Tourism support. A willingness to welcome the diaspora not as outsiders, but as people coming home. When that kind of environment is created, people do not just attend events. They connect. They stay. They return with a different sense of pride and belonging.
During the interview, I kept returning to a simple idea. Attention alone is not the work. The work is what happens before the spotlight arrives, and what continues long after it moves on.
If the creative economy is going to be taken seriously, then culture has to be treated as infrastructure. That means real collaboration between creatives, institutions, governments, and financial bodies. Talent is everywhere, but without systems, talent does not scale.
We also spoke about identity, and I was clear about this. Learning from the West has never been the issue. We all learned from somewhere. The danger is forgetting who you are in the process.
The shift I am focused on now is intentional. I used to push Africa to the world. Now the focus is the world to Africa. Building home as the destination. Creating value that stays within African hands and African ecosystems.
That is part of why I am in Ghana right now.
Beyond the conversation, I am here for Taste The Culture on 26th December at Black Star Square. A celebration of food, fashion, music, and Ghanaian identity, with an incredible lineup including Gyakie, Black Sherrif, Tiwa Savage, Black Sherif, Omah Lay, Ammarae and King Promise.
If Detty December is about coming home, then moments like this are about remembering why home matters.
You can watch the full interview below.
