Mr Eazi opens up about his journey on the Something Else EP

Throughout 2020, Mr Eazi has been London-based, focusing on fusing the unmistakably contagious sounds of Afrobeats and reggaeton with Colombian powerhouse J Balvin on ‘Lento’ and experimenting with Major Lazer and Nicki Minaj on ‘Oh My Gawd’. After a year of business building, Mr Eazi is cooking up his next full-length studio album. To tide us over until then, he’s released the five-track Something Else EP, with the help of a crop of trusted collaborators in Kel P, Killertunes, E Kelly, Spellz, Blaq Jerzee and Jaylon. The project carries a slew of flavours that brought Mr Eazi to the fore, and the musician promises to entice us with more future favourites. Meanwhile, since its release, the project has already gained immense traction worldwide peaking at No 3 on the UK iTunes chart within 24 hours.

A quick chat with Mr Eazi will tell you that he’s come far, and has plenty of energy left to continue his pilgrimage into a future built on trust – for himself and the producers who have helped pave his way.

SHIBA MELISSA MAZAZA: How are you feeling now that the EP is finally out? 

MR EAZI: It’s just super exciting for me because I recorded two out of the five songs by myself, so it’s a proud moment. I’ve finally learnt how to record myself! But more importantly because of what the project represents: it’s a project that finally reset my mind toward the next phase which is recording my album. Since 2018, I’ve not felt like putting out a full body of work, but with this, I just felt like when I completed Something Else, I could record the new album. I actually started recording the new album last Friday, so it’s just super exciting on both ends.”

What was running through your mind over 2020, and how do you keep yourself grounded among all the chaos? 

I’ve been obsessed with making music with J Balvin, mixing Afrobeats with reggaeton, and the collaboration with Major Lazer and Nicki Minaj. Those sounds have been more experimental, which is what I’m about really. Between that and running emPawa, the programme and the distribution, the publishing and the entire music business fare – it’s been exciting but it’s kept me from working on a project. I feel like, finally, I can now devote myself to creating. I want to record the entire project in beach houses across West Africa. I think it’ll be the first time in my career where I’ll spend the entire time recording. I know it’s going to be a lot of music, it’s going to be me expressing myself. I can already feel the freshness of what I’m about to do. I know it’ll be my most exciting project ever, but I don’t even know what it’ll sound like yet.

What went into the choice of producers for this project?

Killertunes and E Kelly came to Ghana and they said, ‘You must record.’ I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, I’ve been recording!’ and they said, ‘No, your own project, we want you to put out an album.’ And so they stayed for about four days. I’d keep going out and coming back late at night from meetings, because when I say business, it’s non-music business. I’m involved in a lot of other businesses across the continent, so that morning, I was just about to go out again. In my head, I was wearing the CEO hat and that was on, and then I just heard that beat. There’s a certain darkness on that record and it inspired me to go, ‘Man'a the don and I paid my price.’ It was going round and round through my head. At the time, not only was I on my way to try and close a deal, personally, but I was also dealing with internal issues of working with friends, and how mixing business and pleasures can turn sour, so I had all this emotion stored up inside, and I think the darkness of the beat just drew me in and I put that energy into the record. 

Looking back on everything you’ve achieved until now, all the life-changing decisions you have to make and where you started, you still remember 15-year-old Oluwatosin, even now that you’re a 29-year-old mogul. What’s it like to live with those two people inside you? What’s it really like to be ‘The Don’?

There are two things that Jay-Z has said. One, kings get their heads cut off. And two, success is like suicide. You know, as I grow I have to make decisions that are not easy to make. You can’t be a don without making tough calls that would hurt you but you have to do it for the greater good. It’s dealing with trust issues, dealing with betrayal, dealing with having to make decisions, running a business and managing people – all this responsibility – and you could easily get lost in all of that. In the middle of last year, right on the brink of it all, I had just finished recording something and I was just done. It all felt like a big burden on me, so I decided to travel. I just got in a car with two of my friends and drove. We took a road trip across Europe and went into the mountains. We did that for about two months. When I came back I had this fresh energy. Being a don means you also must self-reflect, or you’ll be trapped. You have to know that the power you have could change people’s lives but it’s a double-edged sword – you could hurt people too. You have to choose at the end of the day what kind of person you want to be.” 

There’s definitely a power that we’re starting to wield as Africans with our sounds and the way that our music can change lives, and I think that’s one thing that’s missing; we can learn how to produce and protect great music but how do we protect our minds? I’m sure it’s the people you've chosen to surround you that keep you balanced. What is it about E Kelly that adds that spice to your productions, that balances your sound?

E Kelly is a very mature producer. He’s been in the game for a long time, from the beginning of a lot of great careers, from the Wizkids to the Teknos and P-Squares, so there’s a maturity and a calm that he brings to every production. He’s not trying to rush to make every song a hit song. Right now, he's thinking about his legacy. So it’s that calm and that attitude that attracts me to working with E Kelly. I could trust him with my kid. I don't have kids yet but music is something I’m creating and it comes from me, and every song I create has left and has its own life outside. It's that trust factor. And for Killertunes, he’s also very calm like E Kelly but he can switch it up when required. He’s an amazing writer. Not only can he produce a record, but he can help with the melodies – it all comes together so easily and it’s just awesome. Low key makes the work easier for me because they’ve always got 80% of the work done and I can just confidently come and lay my vocals.

And Spellz? How does he compare to the other guys and what kind of energy do you create together?

Spellz! In the same breath, he’s a heavy hitter, a producer, a writer. A lot of creatives don’t like to be told what to do, but Spellz can call me out on my bulshit and say, ‘Eazi, this is not working.’ He tells me he’s been a fan since the first record he heard and he’s always trying to tap into what made him love Eazi. So he helps me make sure that my identity is the same. In that regard, he’s a soundsmith and he’s someone I can also trust with the direction I’m trying to go.

I suppose you definitely trust Blaq Jerzee enough as well, if you were prepared to bring Xeniah onto the next track as the only feature from the EP? Is this new territory for you and her?

Yes, got it 100% there. For ‘Saudi Arabia’ and ‘Cherry’, those are both produced by him, and again I needed to have a lot of trust. For someone to say I would make music like that I would have said no. But I didn’t call him to make those kinds of records, however. When he played them for me it just felt like an experiment, and it actually sounds dope. So where the other producers bring some comfort, Blaq Jerzee is more daring. If you had friends that are very conservative, which E Kelly is, you’d have Blaq Jerzee who’s more like a wildcard, but I still trust him enough to make good music. I feel like this whole project was done to prepare me for my next move, to get to the place where I could record my next album, and Blaq Jerzee’s role here is so important. There’s a freedom that comes with taking a risk when you do something dangerous. Imagine you’re going bungee jumping and there’s a moment where you go ‘What the fuck, I’m actually off the cliff now.’ And that’s the feeling I needed. I wasn’t sure how people were going to take these two songs, and I needed to feel that on this project. Now I feel like I’ve done something I would usually not do. I suspect I’ll become addicted to that feeling of risk and maybe I’ll put two songs on there that nobody would expect again.

I’m looking forward to that. And lastly, my favourite, ‘E Be Mad’ with JayLon... It seems to really fit the idea of the beach houses, with that warmth and the sand between your toes.

I think, of all the songs, ‘E Be Mad’ is the most ‘Eazi’ in a sense that I recorded this song myself, and Jaylon is a young producer I found last year whom I’ve just been a fan of since. He’s a fan of the super laid back Eazi, who’s singing like he doesn’t really give a fuck. His beats always inspire me to write. I like to write on minimalist records if it’s my own, so I write best when it’s maybe chords and drums, or just a melody, or just a simple loop. So he sent me this stripped-down beat, and Kel P heard it while I was recording it on my Instagram live. He said, ‘I wanna take this record to the beach. Send me those vocals.’ The original record Jaylon had sent was more like a radio record, but we decided to take it to the beach. And when he got it, he said, ‘Woah, this is banku music.’ And it was perfect. If there’s any direction I think my album will go, I think ‘E Be Mad’ would be the greatest hint. At first, I thought it was too long, and maybe I should keep it for the album, but Kel P said, ‘No! I have a name to protect as well so I won’t let you down, but I love this record. Keep it here. You don’t need a radio record, you just need good music.’ And that’s why on the cover you see there’s some gibberish and you have to figure out what the words are saying. The entire idea of the EP is, it’s me at the airport trying to figure out where to go. And it’s not Accra to Lagos, and it's not Lagos to London, saying to my fans I haven't decided where to go, and the last track is the hint to where we might be going.

Having said that, where do you think African music, on the whole, is going next, now that so much of popular culture is built on Afro sounds?

We Africans have, for a long time, been looking for that Western validation. Creatives from Africa are in a place where we don’t care about that anymore. We don’t care! We’re just trying to make music for ourselves – and the world should and will come to us. You can see that it’s local music dominating on the charts and there are more sounds crossing over within the continent. Once that happens, it’s going to blow our music up. Hit songs in South Africa are being played in clubs in Nigeria and the No 1s in Congo are played in Ghana, and some Ghanaian songs are playing in Equatorial Guinea. We’re connected now, and that’s what will give us all the power.