[1] For several years, Lapiro's music career took him to West African countries like Nigeria and Benin where he recorded his first single that made no headway.

He returned to Cameroon and then quickly moved to Gabon where he did his first popular song "Pas d'argent, no love" with Haissam Records.

He returned in 1985 to Cameroon, where he proceeded to compose and record what Index on Censorship has described as "a long list of biting texts on the socio-economic realities in his beleaguered country."

Nicknamed "the guitar man," Mbanga became "the idol of the downtrodden and forgotten workers who people the slums and bus stations of Cameroon" and "the spokesman for the youth of his country."

His hits of that period included "No Make Erreur," "Surface de Reparation" "Kop Nie," "Mimba We," and "Na You."

The song denounced the proposed amendment of Cameroon's constitutional clause, which limited presidents to two seven-year terms.

On 24 September 2008, Mbanga was sentenced by the Tribunal de Grande Instance (TGI) to three years in the New Bell prison near Douala.

In April 2010, the Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN also launched a campaign to help win Mbanga's freedom.

In 2011, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared that Mbanga's arrest was an infringement of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.