“No more beef!”

So says the man who decimated Kelly Hansom and obliterated Iceberg Slim.
He is seated in the studio, beside young, talented and classically trained music producer, L-3. M.I is dressed in a white tee shirt over ripped white-washed jeans. As you look at his feet you notice that he could easily buy his shoes from the children’s section of the shoe shop.


Then you also notice something else; no matter how much Jude Abaga’s mum loves him, she will never describe her now globally famous son, the one who dropped out of an American university, as tall.
M.I, aka Mr. Incredible aka Jude Abaga, was spot on when he described himself as “the short black boy with a big bum”, but drop him in a studio booth or on stage with a microphone in front of him and watch him morph into an incredible hulk of rhymes.


There are glimpses of that same ferocity, those merciless puns and put downs, the kind that leaves a hapless rapper seeking a new career path, in his new album, due to drop this October 30th.
Entitled The Chairman, M.I’s new album sees the rapper at his confident best and most collaborative also since he first burst on the rap scene like a Samurai.


Collaborators include 2face and Sound Sultan, Phyno and Runtown, Olamide and Reminisce, Ice Prince and Sarkodie, Nosa and Storm Rex. This forthcoming album is a heady cocktail of musical tastes and styles and influences.
But does it work? Have too many chefs spoilt this musical broth? While this is not an album review it does help to point out that two of the tracks where M.I enlists help, first, from Reminisce and then from Phyno, Runtown and Storm Rex are the clear stand-out tracks on this album. They are like musical heroin; one hit and you are hooked.


Bullion Van which features Phyno, Runtown and Storm Rex will never play to an empty dance floor. No baller will hear the chorus and sit still without identifying with the lyrics: “We be di niggas wey dey step into the club with a bullion van.”
Shekpe, the song with Reminisce, has a chorus adapted from a very famous children’s song and it will have guys singing along in beer parlours and clubs across Nigeria.
On the night of M.I’s full confession of his transition from fighter to lover, he is sipping on Hennessy and Coke and running a quartet through his new album, The Chairman.


He is relaxed and self-deprecatory but his trademark humour and intelligence shine through. His comments are peppered with references to poetry and science and philosophy and religion and he segues between subjects with ease.
The quartet has just listened to Middle, track no 9 on his forthcoming album and on the track, M.I teams up with Olamide and newbie, IG in a song that will squelch and probably also fan the embers of the rumour set abuzz by M.I’s last single, King James.


Many who hear this song when it is released will no doubt ask, who amongst them is King and who sits on that throne because M.I declares without equivocation: “6 years running, I am the baddest rapper ever liveth” a clear reference many would say, to Olamide’s last album, Baddest Nigga Ever Liveth.


M.I’s last single, King James, didn’t come preaching peace and brotherly love. It had a man who, having been gone for four years, was insisting on being the Lebron James of rap.
“All ye rappers, I’m back. You’re dead…/Call me the Lebron James of Verses/Me versus you is worthless/I am he all you rappers worship.../Nobody rapping can kill me, I’m Samurai/…Get off my throne, Get off my throne/Wait nobody is sitting there/ I understand, nobody rapping can sit on my chair…”


But less than two months after dropping those lines dripping with hubris and vitriol, M.I says he is not here to start another war because it doesn’t pay anyone.
“After the whole Kelly Hansom thing, I know first-hand that any sort of beef, you know, it just doesn’t help anybody. It’s completely useless energy. Completely useless energy.”


When he sees the cynicism that greets his remarks, M.I takes the pain to explain. “It seems counter intuitive but it pays everyone to be big. Look at the divas. When the divas were big they were all big, when they crashed they all crashed. There is something that 9ice told me one day. We were talking about somebody on this flight and he just started laughing. He said, ‘M.I, look at this guy. Even if we all take the high way, there’s room for everybody.’ Now, it sounds good philosophically but people would rather say let’s release this album and make sales. But if I’ve learnt anything it is that your success and your lane have nothing to do with anybody else. The only way they interact is when you come together to help each other. These new guys are so important to music now because I can feature them on my album for instance. You can’t see me in an Ice Prince video doing Big Brother. He has to be Ice Prince. Ice Prince has done two shows at Eko hotels, I haven’t done one. So if Reminisce and Ice Prince and Olamide and all these guys are big it pays us because it makes it possible for all of us to go to an all Rap concert. So, it makes me completely happy to see everyone get successful.”


M.I sounds convincing but then there is a lingering sadness; what will rap music be without beef? How can a culture built on swag and braggadocio suddenly lose its gladiatorial antecedents?


M.I doesn’t answer, instead he plays another song, “Brother”, which riffs on the schism in the Choc Boys crew. It is an emotional song that has M.I comparing Choc City’s losses to the big MoHit implosion.
“When MoHits broke up, I was like know what, this will never happen to us/When ChocBoys broke up, I was like hold up, how on earth did that happen to us?”


But it is Nosa, the gospel artist who brings it all home and makes us believe that truly M.I, the samurai, may well have sheathed his sword, when he sings in the chorus: “I no fit climb this mountain on my own…/This life no be Nollywood/I need you Brother.”
For M.I it’s all peace and brotherly love now, or maybe not until The Chairman drops on October 30.

SOURCE: http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/m-i-sheathes-his-sword-in-new-album/191587/

Oya everybody clear road for the Chairman

MI is good tho... I consider him the best... Not cuz of bias buh cuz of that singular fact that he's effing Intelligent and Versatile... Some of his Wordplays and Punchelines and Metaphors are TopNotch...

I really enjoyed that "King James" track...

The boss is back, haters be like oh no,not him again...

Shiiit so no international collaboration on the album. And i had a dream, mi featured kendrickLamar. But all good though. The chairman is back

Make e sha appeal to dem boys.

a class act

M.I. Abaga!!

*sips Heineken*

OAAC:
Shiiit so no international collaboration on the album. And i had a dream, mi featured kendrickLamar. But all good though. The chairman is back

Abi na...... Buh he said they're 16 never been heard tracks, he could have a surprise that he didn't leak at the listening party

thatposter1:

Abi na...... Buh he said they're 16 never been heard tracks, he could have a surprise that he didn't leak at the listening party

hmm, thats so true. I'll have my fingers crossed