Summertime is officially here, which means the sweet riddims of dancehall are at the peak of their powers.
On Friday (July 3), Billboard can exclusively reveal that Nigerian banku pioneer Mr Eazi tapped dancehall superproducer Dre Skull to harness that energy for a new dancehall-inspired mixtape titled Yard & Yanga. Oh, and they’re bringing King of Dancehall Vybz Kartel along for the ride. The King of Dancehall appears on “Lambo,” the project’s lead single — also out today — which finds the pair reuniting after 2021’s “Sekkle and Bop” and 2025’s “Dance Pon Me.”
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“Eazi and I have been working on music together for years and, along the way, we became good friends,” Dre Skull tells Billboard. “When we go to the studio, we inevitably end up making music that weaves together elements of Dancehall and Afrobeats, and those sessions became the starting point for this project. At a certain point, we just realized we were building a larger project, and we leaned into shaping it.”
Eazi credits Nigeria’s dancehall-inspired konto artists like Baba Fryo, Kimi Ranky and Marvellous Benji as his gateway into the Jamaican-born genre, and his appreciation for the style has grown into his own “Zaggadat” catchphrase, an homage to Beenie Man. “I love the raw energy that comes with the sound. It’s one of the most genuine expressions of music,” he says. “I think it captures my other side.”
Vybz Kartel, who’s coming off last month’s God & Time album (June 5), made for a natural collaborator on “Lambo.” The summer-ready bashment banger finds Eazi using his signature, slick wordplay to deliver an earworm hook that calls on both Jamaican patois colloquialisms and Nigerian pidgin. “Dre Skull: “‘Lambo’ has a hypnotic quality built on a heavy low end that taps into the raw energy of street dances,” says Dre Skull. “I knew Kartel would know exactly what to do, and he is the perfect counterbalance to Eazi here.”
Yard & Yanga marks the natural evolution of his years-long friendship with Skull, who helped define the sound of 2010s dancehall with his work on Kartel’s Kingston Story (2011), Popcaan’s Where We Come From (2014) and Forever (2018). Notably, U.K.-based illustrator Kione Grandison hand-drew the single’s cover art, taking inspiration from West African and Caribbean folk and street art.
The mixtape, which has been years in the making, is also the latest addition to Eazi’s mixtape catalog, joining About to Blow (2013), Life Is Eazi, Vol. 1 — Accra to Lagos (2017) and Life Is Eazi, Vol. 2 — Lagos to London (2018). “With this project, I had a very clear concept of what I wanted to explore, and we intentionally kept it creatively fun during the process,” notes Eazi. “It felt naturally related to the other mixtapes I’ve done.” Yard & Yang arrives later this year via Dre Skull’s Mixpak Records and Eazi’s emPawa Africa.
Listen to “Lambo” below.
from Billboard https://ift.tt/16hzV2t