The Guy: Prospective MI Abaga
The Guy. Two questions often emanate whenever an artiste — with the kind of career MI Abaga has — announces a new album. The first question is an eager anticipation: WILL the album be good? Then while taking off your headphone at the time out of the closing track, the second question comes to fore: IS the album good? This second question is merely a resignation because unfortunately, you don’t ask good albums if they are good after listening to them. The proof of a pudding is in the eating — not after the eating. Does The Guy fall flat on its face as a new outing of a new guy, or it stands tall among the large oeuvre of work of the most talented rapper in the continent, formerly MI Abaga?
Of course, no other rapper stands taller than Jude Abaga, defunct stage name MI Abaga, new stage name The Guy, in the rap industry in Africa. Man has paid his dues and earns the legendary title. At that, it should have driven The Guy to give an altogether harder album for an interesting review. But it is disappointing that The Guy is a commercialized rap hearing rather than the expected hard-core one.
Granted with the ascendance of Afrobeats, hip-pop entirely took a back seat in the music industry particularly in Nigeria. And so as earlier stated, The Guy is a commercialized rap album for example: in ‘Bigger’, a track graced by America’s poetic rapper Nas, Olamide Baddo fulfilled the suspicion and prophesy passed at the announcement of The Guy that Baddo was going to pick the chorus rather than drop the bars. The Guy could not have stopped him from singing in that track that is entirely supposed to be a rap, or is the indigenous rapper gradually taking a bow on rap? Because lately he is often singing than rapping. Furthermore, what the heck happened in ‘More Life?’ Being the longest track of the album featuring another two talented rappers, only Jesse Jagz could rap. Did The Guy invite Ice Prince and reduced him only to introduce the track and drop a single word ‘yeah’ along the sidewalk? Apparently, Ice Prince’s rap career is gone for good. Again, that is another opportunity to hear rap, but it failed to come through. Nevertheless, the track is my first favourite and I wonder how it became that.
Again, The Guy is a commercialized rap hearing and when The Guy gets to rap, it does not feel like the former MI Abaga we used to know. His bars are weak and flows loose in many places. This is elaborated in a track about hate that is supposed to be as hard as a diss. MI Abaga sounds tired in that track, maybe the reason for the change of name. Check this out: ‘I fit to pay salary to your bumshoot/wetin you do my head e passi gunshots/make I put my number on your devices/so that make I call you later maybe by six…’ Does this not sound like lines an amateur rapper can take? But Duncan Mighty saved the track, that Port Harcourt first son of ours.
MI Abaga was the best love song writer in the history of love songs in Nigeria. This is the first track one could say MI successfully passed the baton to The Guy. He did it in ‘One Naira’ featuring Waje; The Guy did it, more for me, in ‘The Inside’ featuring The CaveMen and Phyno. That track could not have been sung better outside highlife. It is good that Phyno did not rap but sang what should have been done by Flavour. I will reiterate that beautiful love songs about marriage is thing The Guy succeeded MI Abaga with because ‘The Lovesong’ with Wande Coal is inarguably a sequel to ‘One Naira’ with Waje.
I love how The Guy went cultural in ‘Soldier.’ The track takes you back to Yxng Dxnzl (The Evaluation on Self-Worth); it is another track MI could be said to conveniently hand over to The Guy to talk about cultural issues, except this time one that concerns the man, any man, any husband, any father, any soldier out there. You are that soldier The Guy appreciates for your tenacity, hard work, courage, for not having in to suicide amidst the pressure. ‘They tell us boys don’t cry, but they don’t tell us why,’ The Guy raps. You’re not immune to pain, to pressure just because you’re masculine, Tomi Owa says when she asks the soldier to lift their head high. The sound is a unique one among the tracks in the album. Tomi Owa, where did The Guy get her from?
The Guy is a great piece of art if it stands alone and not placed side by side with previous works of the then MI Abaga. But hard as you try, you can’t tear the new guy in The Guy apart the old guy in MI Abaga, and that is why for me the album almost falls short of expectations. However, there is a great prospect in The Guy we won’t so much miss in former MI Abaga.
