Mr Incredible

Editor’s note: This essay is available in our print issue, The Age of Afrobeats. Buy the issue here.

The debate about the birthplace of Nigerian hip-hop is mostly an argument about paying respect—as the hip hop culture is known for—especially since The Remedies, formed a year later, in 1998, blew up in Lagos and is, today, more likely to begin a conversation on how rap music became mainstream in Nigeria. But silent in this conversation is Kaduna, where the rappers Six Foot Plus, Overdose, and Eldee, once avatars of Nigerian rap music, are from. In the end, however, from a long line of ancestors, emerged a rapper who would represent not just his city, but his country, and even the African continent, in a ground-breaking career arguably unrivalled by any African rapper to date. That rapper is M.I Abaga.

M.I didn’t announce himself so loudly. The year was 2008 when Abuja was still lauded as the ‘fastest growing city in Africa’. M.I, who had formed a music group, Loopy Music, in Jos (with brother, Jesse Jagz, Ruby, and Lindsay), moved to Abuja following a record deal with Chocolate City label. Abuja was very much still morphing, unassuming, still defining itself, which led to the proliferation of satellite towns as a direct result of an influx of citizens relocating to it to enjoy its comfort and safety. There wasn’t any solid entertainment infrastructure. What was available were new radio stations like Hot 98.3 FM, Capital FM, and Cool FM, among others. With Cable TV, young people could watch South Africa’s Channel O, and MTV Base, popular music channels at the time. And on paid airtime on AIT, indigenous music channels like Soundcity and Hip TV aired, becoming popular.

It was perhaps this slow and lukewarm landscape that inspired M.I’s laidback but hippy and funky 2008 single, ‘Crowd Mentality’. Before the first punchlines of the song, we hear the intro, ‘Now we’re going to talk about something serious…’ In no rightful rapper’s mind, or even the mind of a music executive, could anyone have expected such a song, which defied known formulas of a hit song, would become pivotal. ‘Crowd Mentality’ paralleled (known as Tuface at the time) 2Baba’s ‘Nfana Ibaga’ as a song that announces an artist as well as a new era. Where Tuface’s ‘Nfana Ibaga’ was more personal, a reflection on self-worth, M.I’s ‘Crowd Mentality’ was a critical manifesto of the society M.I found himself in; it showed his scepticism of the music industry, and his stated vision or solution to the problems he highlighted. He rapped, ‘If you don’t have a mind of your own / Don’t be disappointed, this is fine, be a clone,’ and ‘I’ve changed my mind I’d rather be the same as / All these fake ass entertainers / Make bad music just to rock in arenas.’ He goes harder in his criticism of what is almost an over-glorification of philistinism:

M.I’s sentiments or distaste for our music tastes in the foregoing lyrics represented, at the time, what was a vacuum in the music scene that allowed songs presumed of being of lesser merit, or simply wanton, to be celebrated—a vacuum, perhaps even unbeknownst to him, he had to fill. It is this same vacuum that made him (the boldest rapper at the time) thrive in a landscape where other rappers were stuck with a forgone aesthetic or had already lost their game. If radio stations were not playing the stale raps of Ruggedman, 9ice’s Fuji rap verses, or Mode 9’s popular ‘Cry’, it was M.I’s ‘Crowd Mentality’. Unsurprisingly, it won the Hip Hop World Award, now known as the Headies, for Best Rap Single in 2008, the year of its release.