Mr Eazi has been a number one determine on this planet of Afrobeats for years, and he’s all the time had an expansive definition of that ever-rising music’s sonic and cultural potentialities. The Nigerian-born artist, who now primarily lives in Accra, Ghana, has collaborated with Beyoncé and Diplo, and amongst his hottest songs is a 2019 reduce with J Balvin and Unhealthy Bunny. In reality, as Afrobeats’ profile has grown, he’s bristled at broad catchall style phrases to characterize music from all through Africa, arguing for much less reductive remedy.
“I believe it’s unfair to even put all the pieces [in] Afropop,” he lately instructed Rolling Stone. “Korean pop is pop music from Korea. We’re not calling it ‘Asia pop.’ ”
A way of Mr Eazi as each a curator and an envoy is throughout his new album, The Evil Genius, which is technically his full-length debut after a run of buoyant, luxurious hits together with “Leg Over” and “Dance for Me,” and mixtape-style releases. The Evil Genius is expansively worldwide. He wrote and recorded completely different elements of the LP in Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, the U.S., and the U.Okay., and also you hear these locations and extra in its sound, from the palm-wine-guitar shimmer and highlife horns of “Fefe Ne Fefe” to the robust, moody Afro drill of “Recommendation” to “Exit,” a joyful stunner with an help from the Soweto Gospel Choir.
Eazi even commissioned 16 artistic endeavors by African artists to accompany every of the album’s tracks. The Pan-African scope provides the album a way of grand ambition that matches a significant artist making his most coherent assertion after a number of high-profile years within the sport. However Eazi’s attribute clean, skittering rhythms, warmly insistent singing, and welcoming melodies by no means really feel overburdened by his massive concepts, even when he’s linking his personal legacy to these of Nelson Mandela and Fela Kuti, or dropping Drake-size self-mythologizing like, “First they love you, then they stab you/Omo na the story of my life.”
Eazi establishes his soulman bona fides on the elegant, subdued “Legalize,” and on “Òròkórò,” he shares the mic with iconic Beninese singer Angélique Kidjo, who makes a downright regal look. He declares himself “sentimental” and “monumental” on the amiably braggy single “Chop Time, No Pal,” co-produced by Andre Vibez, who was a part of the staff behind the Rema/Selena Gomez smash “Calm Down.” “Infamous,” one in every of six tracks helmed by main Afrobeats producer Kel-P, riffs on the Duran Duran hit sampled by the Infamous B.I.G., merging pop and hip-hop historical past into its personal radiant sound with out Eazi seeming in any respect like he’s attempting to nostalgia-mine an Anglo-American crossover. “Good Lovin’ ” is a equally seamless confluence, with a reggae really feel and visitor vocals from Ghanaian singer Efya.
The album’s centerpiece is the swaying banger “We Dey,” titled after a pidgin phrase that means “we’re right here.” Co-written by Whoisakin, an R&B artist from Lagos, it was recorded in L.A. and impressed partially by protests in opposition to police brutality in Nigeria. Because the beat ascends, Eazi sings the title phrase with prayerful gravitas. In a single elegant, danceable gesture, we hear private delight, native wrestle, and international ambitions. On The Evil Genius, that’s all there in beneficiant doses, simply balanced in a single man’s imaginative and prescient.
