Afropop superstar Mr Eazi has shared his long-awaited debut album, The Evil Genius, out now via the artist’s own emPawa Africa imprint. 
Recorded between Ouidah and Cotonou, Benin; Kigali, Rwanda; Accra and Kokrobite, Ghana; Lagos, Nigeria; London; Los Angeles; and New York City, The Evil Genius features some of Mr Eazi’s most personal work, as he dives deeply into subjects like love, betrayal, loneliness, and family, expressed through three distinctive acts.
Expanding upon Banku Music, Mr Eazi’s distinctive spin on contemporary afropop, the project seamlessly pulls together an eclectic range of styles and influences across its 16 tracks, from Ghanaian highlife to grime to gospel, to create an instant, pan-African classic. 
Guest features on the project include Angelique Kidjo (Benin), Efya (Ghana), Whoisakin (Nigeria) and three-time Grammy winners Soweto Gospel Choir (South Africa), who add a heavenly choral arrangement to the recent single, “Exit.” 
Tekno, the Nigerian afrobeats star whose rise in the mid 2010s corresponded with Mr Eazi’s own, appears on “Jamboree” (Watch visualizer HERE), a return to the ‘pon pon’ sound which defined Afrobeats at the time when the two were first emerging. The Nigerian music star Joeboy, who first Mr Eazi discovered and signed to emPawa Africa in 2018, reconnects with his mentor on the playful “Zuzulakate,” reminding listeners of their impeccable chemistry. 
Producers who contributed to The Evil Genius include Kel-P (Nigeria), Knucks (U.K.), Michael Brun (Haiti), Andre Vibez (Nigeria), Yung Willis (Nigeria), Nonso Amadi (Nigeria/Canada), KillBeatz (Ghana), M.O.G Beatz (Ghana), E Kelly (Nigeria), Type A (Nigeria), Stikmatik (U.K.), Phantom (Nigeria), Venna (U.K.), KDream (Nigeria) and Mr Eazi himself. 
In a first-of-its-kind fusion of African music and art, Mr Eazi commissioned visual artists from across the continent to create a unique, physical art piece to represent each of the album’s 16 tracks. While traveling the continent completing the album, Mr Eazi personally handpicked 13 artists, representing eight African countries, adding art curator and patron to his already extensive resume of pursuits. The result is a unique and ambitious pan-African multimedia project that has earned notice from art-world figures like Marina Abramović, and media including ARTNews and The Guardian.

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Benin was central to the creation of The Evil Genius, a place for Mr Eazi to discover himself and reset. “[In] Cotonou, there was just peace,” he says. “My ancestry is from Benin. My dad told me his grandfather was from there. It was like going back home, and that’s where I found a lot of the visual artists for the project.”
Much of The Evil Genius was recorded in hotels, sitting rooms, kitchens, balconies – on the go. In Cotonou, Eazi made Eya, a community centre with a dynamic studio, his hub. It was here that he hosted the singer Liya and her team, including the producer KDream, for a series of sessions. “Their energy was so creative ,” Mr Eazi says. “I heard [the beat from “Mandela”], and it just felt so spiritual. I was probably high to be honest. And I just go: I want to live forever like Nelson Mandela.” 
For Eazi, “Mandela” is shorthand for legacy. He places himself in the lineage of not just Nelson Mandela, but Fela Kuti, soccer star Karim Benzema — Africans with larger than life legacies. At this point in the album, Eazi has returned to the mindset on the intro, “Olúwa Jọ̀” and its theme of family and prayer. “I would just remember my dad praying for our futures as a kid,” Eazi says. “My dad fought so many battles for me, sacrificing to send me to the best schools. I feel a lot of these temptations I surmount is not because of my power but because someone prayed for me...”

Mandela

Produced by Kel-P with an assist from U.K. guitarist AoD, who previously played on Mr Eazi’s 2018 “Miss You Bad,” “Notorious” is Mr Eazi at his most braggadocious. The playful bop furthers the transitional movement begun with “Chop Time, No Friend.” “I am making things lighter and softening up the message,” Mr Eazi says. “The first four tracks are not my usual [sound]. So here I wanted to bring you something more familiar. I wanted to pass the same message from tracks 1-4, but in a more playful way.”

Notorious

“Fefe Ne Fefe,” the single from Mr Eazi's debut album, The Evil Genius set for release. “Fefe Ne Fefe” is one of several tracks from the album that Mr Eazi recorded in the resort town of Kokrobite, Ghana, with producer Kel-P. With its cool highlife rhythm, smooth sax lead and palm-wine guitar sound, the uptempo yet easygoing track transports listeners to a retro vision of West Africa befitting the beachside locale where it was made.

Another track from the Kokrobite sessions with Kel-P, “Fefe Ne Fefe” carries listeners to a retro vision of Ghana with its cool highlife rhythm and palmwine guitar sound. Fefe Ne Fefe — “beauty is beautiful” — comes from an Akan proverb: Fefe ne fe, se obaa tu amirika ne oso ni nufumua, eye fe, enye se ebe ti ato ntia. In English, now: When a woman is running, she holds her breasts not because they would fall but because she’s a woman. That’s what makes her beautiful. “I have professed my love on ‘Jamboree,’ she told me what she wants on ‘Good Lovin,’ we’ve fought on ‘Lack of Communication.’ Now, I’ve messed up, and I’m trying to make things better. I someday would like to get married, so I’m saying ‘Let’s go meet your dad. I want this to be something more. Then we go to the next song…”

Fefe Ne Fefe

“Exit” is the final track on The Evil Genius but, in many ways, it is the centerpiece of the long-awaited project. Conceived during a period of inner turmoil and strife, it’s one of the Nigerian singer’s most personal and inward-looking songs to date, but also one of his most triumphant. Among the song’s memorable lines is one which Mr Eazi has adopted as his daily mantra: Thank you God for keeping things running smoothly. “When I wrote this song, I was disappointed in everything —the music business, feeling betrayed by my friends," Mr Eazi says. "But, in the midst of feeling disappointed, I was thankful.”

Exit

Exit (feat. Soweto Gospel Choir)

“Chop Time, No Friend” is a playful return to the Banku Music sound Mr Eazi pioneered and popularized with his early singles and mixtapes. “Chop Time, No Friend is a very common Ghanaian saying, something you will see written on the front or side of buses like God is Great,” Mr Eazi says. “It means when you are eating, you don’t think about anybody. You are just focused on your enjoyment.”
For Eazi, it’s a way to express how he doesn’t let haters distract him from enjoying the fruits of his success. “It is touching on how people chitchat on me, but I am still focused on my enjoyment,” Eazi says. “It is a declaration, a celebration of self. I am saying everything I touch turns to gold. You can’t trouble me.”

Chop Time, No Africa

Chop Time, No Friend

Ghana is where Mr Eazi began his recording career and rose to fame, and he considers Accra a second home, a place where he can always go to cool down. But, even there, the pressures that have built around him can surface. Mr Eazi recorded “Advice,” with its dark, grime-inspired tones, during a particularly heavy moment in his life, as he watched some of his longest-held relationships crumble under the weight of his success. “When you first come up [as an artist], everybody is in love with you,” Mr Eazi says. “Then they want to draw you down. People begin to betray you. If you're able to survive this stage, you go untouchable. But this is the hardest stage.” The lyrically-dense “Advice” namedrops such martyrs as the former Democratic Republic of the Congo president Joseph Kabila and Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian writer and activist whose 1995 hanging inspired domestic and international outrage. “I was coming from a place of having that energy,” Eazi says.

Advice

Kel-P, one of the most accomplished African producers working today, is Mr Eazi’s steadiest collaborator on The Evil Genius, producing or co-producing six tracks. “Kel-P made me start recording the album,” Mr Eazi says. “Without Kel-P, I might not have made one.” Much of The Evil Genius was created in Kokrobite, a beachside village near Accra, where Mr Eazi set up shop with trusted friends and collaborators in 2021. It was there that Eazi and
Kel-P aligned on Òròkórò, which boasts one of the album’s most lush arrangements and its highest profile guest feature, Angelique Kidjo.
Initially, the track featured a sample of the Afropop queen’s 1990s-era hit Wombo Lombo on its hook. Wombo Lombo became Òròkórò, after they recruited Kidjo to sing on the track, and put a fresh spin on the melody. “It so
happened that both Kel-P and I were working with Angelique Kidjo at the time,” Mr Eazi says. (They each appeared on the iconic singer’s
Grammy-winning 2021 album, Mother Nature.) Lyrics are largely in Yoruba, expressing a mix of spirituality and gratitude. “I am saying: ‘What God has done for me in secret can’t be quiet, you can see the love God has shown me’,” Mr Eazi says. What began as a beat on Kel-P’s computer
in Lagos would travel across West Africa, from Nigeria to Ghana and, finally, Benin. “We literally
finished it in a house on a lagoon in Ouidah,”
Mr Eazi recalls, citing the city in Benin, which
also happens to be the birthplace of Angelique
Kidjo. “That’s a very spiritual place.”

Òròkórò

Òròkórò (feat. Angélique Kidjo)

Mr Eazi and fellow afrobeats superstar Joeboy have been making magic happen together since 2018, when Eazi discovered Joeboy from Instagram and made him the first artist on emPawa Africa. “Nobody,” their 2020 collaboration with DJ Neptune, is among the biggest hits of both artists’ careers. That chemistry continues on the joyful “Zuzulakate.” Zuzulakate is a gibberish phrase, lifted, tongue in cheek, from an Instagram video by a Nigerian comedian who was parodying the speaking in tongues and fanciful prayer of Nigerian preachers. Musically, the track, produced by Type A and Kel P, revisits the smoothed-out, mid-tempo Banku Music sound of Mr Eazi’s early days — the perfect template for Eazi to “celebrate grace, celebrate favour.”
 “I started making the song in Ouidah on the dining table, but I was joking,” Mr Eazi recalls. “Next thing I knew, the following morning, the boys had started making the song. We made a sketch, and I flew to Rwanda. I am in this thanksgiving phase of the album, and that’s where my mind was. I had just come into Rwanda, I had set up companies there, things were moving nicely. It just made sense for me to record a song like this…”

Zuzulakate

Zuzulakate (feat. Joeboy)

No Bad Boy, No Party

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Buju BNXN - Sweet Tea (Aduke)

We Dey

The song begins with a voice note which Mr Eazi’s mother left on his phone as she recovered from an important surgery. “Olúwa Jọ̀ is a prayer,” Mr Eazi says. “It means Please God.” The intro track ponders mortality, aging, maturity and loyalty, sentiments he was forced to consider as he spent time by his mother’s side in hospital. “I saw these people laying down at the end of their lives, just lonely, waiting to die,” he recalls. “I thought: Who is going to be with me if I was in this situation? Who will be there by the side of the bed?” He also realized he was lacking people with whom he could discuss his current predicaments and challenges. “I realized: There are some things I wanted to express.”
While the album is, in a sense, a document of Mr Eazi’s travels across Africa over the last several years, “Olúwa Jọ̀” was made in London, with the exception of the chorus by Beninese vocal group Les Teriba. “I felt the song needed some female voices,” Mr Eazi says. “I went to an event where France was returning a stolen artifact to Benin, and there were women singing – folk performers. I asked for their number, and the following day they came into the studio.”

Olúwa Jọ̀

“Jamboree,” the last track recorded for The Evil Genius, finds Mr Eazi firmly settling into the “love section” of the album. Produced by Nigerian beatmaker Yung Willis. it evokes the now-classic  ‘pon pon’ sound which defined afrobeats between 2016 and 2018. “The love section takes you through different stages of a relationship,” Mr Eazi says. “‘Jamboree’ takes you through that stage where you will do anything for her. You’re remembering the first time you saw her and told her you wanted to be with her. I’m using ‘Jamboree’ as a pet name, calling her ‘My Jamboree.”

Jamboree

Jamboree (feat. Tekno)

SHUT IT DOWN

MR EAZI is the creative and business visionary leading African music into its future.
As a recording artist, the Nigerian multihyphenate is the voice behind afropop hits “Pour Me Water,” “Skin Tight” (featuring Efya) and “Leg Over,” as well as groundbreaking collaborations with the likes of Beyoncé, Bad Bunny and J Balvin. A serial entrepreneur, he’s also the founder of emPawa Africa, a talent incubator program which funds and mentors emerging African artists, and the digital music aggregator emPawa Distribution — initiatives hailed by CNN, Rolling Stone, Billboard and Forbes for their forward-thinking approach. Mr Eazi’s ascent into global stardom has seen him clock over 4 billion streams worldwide, making him one of the most streamed African artists worldwide. 

Born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria and raised in Lagos, Mr Eazi began his music career while attending college in Ghana, where his side hustles included promoting concerts and running a concierge service shuttling wealthy kids to parties. His first-ever recording, made on a whim, became an accidental local hit, prompting him to self-release a mixtape, About to Blow, in 2013. Blending touches of Ghanaian highlife music and Pidgin slang with Nigerian chord progressions and R&B vocal inflection, he soon developed a mellowed-out spin on afropop which he dubbed Banku Music, after the popular Ghanaian comfort food dish. 

After returning to Nigeria to work a corporate job in engineering, Eazi decided to make music his full-time focus, using a $1,000 gift from friends to fund the video for his breakthrough 2015 single, “Skin Tight.” Arriving just as afrobeats was exploding into global consciousness, Eazi quickly became an international figure, performing across Africa, Europe and the United States, pouring his travels into the critically-acclaimed  mixtapes Life is Eazi, Vol. 1: Accra to Lagos (2017) and Life is Eazi, Vol 2: Lagos to London (2018). These projects and their resulting hit singles, along with Eazi’s fashion-forward personal style, helped land Eazi in the pages of Vogue, THE FADER, Paper and other influential outlets. 

Fiercely independent and digitally savvy, Eazi has resisted opportunities to sign with major record labels, instead choosing to operate his own companies and steer his own fate. Since establishing his career, he has answered the call to mentor and support other emerging artists from Africa. Taking inspiration from his own experiences participating in tech incubators as a young entrepreneur, he launched emPawa Africa in late 2018. In its first round of investment, emPawa Africa provided US$300,000 —or US$3,000 each — in funding for 100 artists from 11 countries, launching the careers of rising stars like Nigeria’s Joeboy and Ghana’s J.Derobie. The initiative’s success led Eazi to form additional companies like emPawa Distribution, the first digital music aggregator focused solely on servicing African music to the global market; and emPawa Live, a college concert series, to support this growing ecosystem of talent. 

2019 proved to be a watershed year for Eazi, on several accounts. April saw him make his debut at Coachella, where he was one of only two African artists to play the world’s most prestigious music festival. He was featured on two tracks from Beyoncé’s The Lion King: The Gift album, and appeared alongside Latin superstars Bad Bunny and J Balvin’s on "Como Un Bebé," from the duo’s collaborative album Oasis. He has started 2020 once again on a high note, releasing the striking video for “Kpalanga,” and collaborating with DJ Neptune and Joeboy on “Nobody,” which has topped charts across several African countries while reaching #7 on Billboard’s World Digital Songs Sales Chart. One Day You Will Understand, a four-song EP of mellow afro R&B followed that Summer, with another EP, Something Else EP released in 2021. In May of 2020, Eazi appeared on the cover of Billboard’s Africa Now issue, the U.S. music bible’s first ever issue dedicated to African music. Forbes Africa also included him in its annual 30 Under 30 issue spotlighting the continent’s young thought leaders. 
Always thinking beyond music and looking at the bigger picture, Mr Eazi has founded and financed groundbreaking business ventures through Zagadat Capital, an pan-African venture capital fund whose motto is “Investing In Cool Shit.” Through Zagadat Capital, he invests mainly in Africa-founded tech startups that look to solve fundamental problems. Among these is pawaPay, an Africa-focused peer-to-peer payment platform which he invested in through its $9 million seed round in 2021, and which he believes could potentially reach a $1 billion valuation in the next two years. As a public figure with a large platform and voice, Mr Eazi believes it is duty to advocate for his fellow creatives and entrepreneurs.  
Even as he grows his business empire and doubles down on his goal of expanding opportunities for African creatives, Mr Eazi has not lost his thirst for creating music. In 2023, he will be releasing two full-length album projects. The first of these, titled Chop Life, Vol. 1: Mzansi Chronicles, was released in May 2023 and is the debut album from ChopLife SoundSystem, an Afro-dance music collective consisting of Mr Eazi and DJ Edu. 
After two mixtapes, two EPs and over 4 billion streams, the Nigerian afropop star will finally release his debut solo album, The Evil Genius, on Oct. 27. In a first-of-its-kind fusion of African music and art, each track on the project is represented by a unique, physical art piece, which Mr Eazi commissioned from a different contemporary African artist as he crossed the continent recording the album.

Mandela

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