NewsM.anifest and Black Sherif's "Road Rage" hides Julius Caesar three times in four lines
Unveiled at Nowhere Cool At 10 on Saturday and out today, the single runs from a Minnesota college in 2001 to Ghana's Artiste of the Year taking the wheel.
M.anifest and Black Sherif released "Road Rage" on Thursday, 29 October, five days after they performed it together at Nowhere Cool At 10, the tenth-anniversary show for M.anifest's 2016 album, at the Accra Polo Club.
The first stop
The song is built as one long drive. It starts in America, where M.anifest went in 2001 to study at Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota. He graduated in economics in 2005. Twenty-five years later he is still driving.
Caesar, Kaiser, Scheisse
The best stretch of the song comes early. M.anifest quotes Julius Caesar's "I came, I saw, I conquered", said after the Battle of Zela in 47 BC. Two lines later he raps "Many men wanna be Kaiser". Kaiser is the German word for emperor, and it comes from the Latin name Caesar. Then he adds a German swear word. That is the same name in three languages in four lines.
So much drive
The hook, "So much drive, I dey road rage", uses drive in two senses: driving the car, and the ambition that keeps him going. Lines about rent turning into a mortgage and a grey beard show how long the road has been.
The Artiste of the Year takes the wheel
Black Sherif takes the second half. In May he won Artiste of the Year at the 27th Telecel Ghana Music Awards, his second, with Iron Boy named Album of the Year and five awards in one night. His verse answers people "questioning my manners, questioning my talent". Most of it is in Twi.
Two generations, the same road. Stream it at manifest.lnk.to/MBSRR.
The Caesar chain is the bar of the year so far: a Latin boast, a German title that comes from the same name, and a German swear word, all in four lines, from a rapper who studied economics. Then he hands the car to Black Sherif, and the song becomes two generations on the same road.
- Ghanamotion and GhanaWeb: Road Rage unveiled at Nowhere Cool At 10, Accra Polo Club, 24 Oct 2026
- Ghanamotion and GBC: Nowhere Cool, M.anifest's 2016 album
- Wikipedia and GhanaWeb: M.anifest at Macalester College, Minnesota, from 2001, BA Economics 2005
- Wikipedia, "Battle of Zela", and Plutarch, Caesar 50: "Veni, vidi, vici", 47 BC
- Etymonline and Wikipedia: "kaiser" comes from the Latin "Caesar"
- GNA and Yen.com.gh: Black Sherif, Artiste of the Year at the 27th Telecel Ghana Music Awards, 9 May 2026
- Official lyric video
Every factual line in this story is checked against at least two independent sources, unless the text says it comes from one report.