Straight out of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, NST Cophie’s 1980 LP ‘Mon’Da Center’ is an album that has long been sought-after by diggers and DJs alike, looking to find those killer tracks that no one else knows or can get their hands on. Often reaching eye-watering prices, Ernest Koffi’s Ivorian disco cuts have long been out of reach for music lovers and rare groove collectors across the globe – until now!
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Born in 1955 in Dimbokro, south-central Ivory Coast, NST Cophie’s (Ernest Koffi) grew up surrounded by music. Influenced both by his family – his grandmother and father were both musicians and his half-brother Alpha Blondy has himself had a successful musical career – and by American jazz musicians such as Chick Corea and Miles Davis, Ernest quickly realised that the only career he wanted was to be a musician himself. As he reminisces, ‘everyone was a musician. Music was in the blood’. It seems only natural therefore that he decided to start his first band with fellow Ivorian musician Desire Gadeau in 1968, followed by another outfit, ‘The Husband Mackers’ in 1970.
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Released on Polydor’s Nigerian division in 1978, Ofege’s fourth and final LP ‘How Do You Feel’ proved a massive hit. And with tracks such as ‘Burning Jungle’ included on the wax, its easy to see why. The track appears today to be so forward-focused, so ‘modern’ for its time, foreshadowing 
Enlightment’s gospel disco album ‘Faith is the Key’ is a holy grail in the truest sense. Full of dance floor-friendly spiritual groove, the record was released on New Release Records in 1984 (although no one would be blamed for guessing its release as a few years earlier, lacking the more ‘electronic’ synth sounds emerging from 1983 onwards). Based in the Washington 
