EAZI DOES IT

He told Apple Music: ‘Yo, I’m Africa’s next biggest artist.’ It worked, writes

It’s a hot, early December afternoon in Maboneng, the gentrified enclave on the eastern edge of Jozi’s CBD. Fox and Main streets are filled with people going up and down, while others take shelter from the heat by seeking out the shade provided by street-side eateries on the fancy, secure Fox. Adding to the clamour are clashing sounds from busking musicians and open car boots from whose speakers all sorts of music blare. From the sixth floor of one of the many buildings lining

Fox, Mr Eazi’s Pour me Water is heard.

Eazi’s year-old song has been a staple at clubs and hangouts for a few months now. Before, it was another single, Leg Over.

Born Oluwatosin Oluwole Ajibade in

Port Harcourt, the Nigerian musician was in Mzansi doing press runs for his Lagos to

London mixtape.

At 15 songs, it feels short; I let it repeat at least three times in a single sitting.

In typical Mzansi fashion, we’ve been the last to catch on.

This late-to-the-jam aesthetic has also been afforded other upper-echelon Nigerian artists like Davido and Burna Boy, both of whom have had chart-topping singles with an outsize impact worldwide — apart from Down South, of course.

I blame it on the general underappreciation people from around these parts have for music and artists of African origin that aren’t Salif Keita, Angélique

Kidjo or Baaba Maal.

Mr Eazi’s view has me reconsidering mine. He draws a distinction between distributing music in a market, and servicing that market. “You have to be aggressive. When you’re going into a market that already has a peculiar taste for music, there are two things that can happen. It’s either the music organically gets to them, and they feel it and everybody accepts it,” he says.

The second option is to be in people’s faces, consistently. “They need to hear your song like it’s an advert.”

Yet another way to view it: a lot of goalpost shifting happens when a contemporary African musician is involved, in spite of having the same structural arsenal as artists from the Western world, as is the case with Mr Eazi, who signed a licensing deal with the Universal Music Group. Pop stars from America, for instance, never have to set foot here, never need to subject themselves to gruelling press and radio runs — he’s been sitting in the same spot for most of the day; our appointment was late afternoon — for their music to pop.

Lagos to London has been out since November, yet it’s currently the most streamed album across Africa. Mr Eazi, who goes back and forth between his phone and our conversation for the duration of our chat, will at some point display the backend stats.

The combined Tidal, Spotify and Apple Music numbers don’t lie.

Mr Eazi’s decision to pursue music fulltime started fairly late. “It was a joke ting,” he says. One of his many signature hats is placed on the table, a fair distance from him. He sports a yellow, branded T-shirt, and completes the look with a brown Louis Vuitton bag strapped onto his upper body.

After a successful stint as an events promoter while he was a tertiary level student in Ghana, and other nonmusic business ventures thereafter, Mr Eazi recorded and released his first mixtape in 2013. “And then we fast forward to 2016, which is where I decide ‘yeah, I wanna do this’.” That year he googled the location of Apple Music’s offices while in Dubai to meet the team. “I said ‘yo, I’m Africa’s next biggest artist, and I wanna see the head of marketing’.”

That relationship led to a string of opportunities. “The music would go on to move from Accra to Lagos. By the end of 2016 I’m all over the clubs, the radios, the cars, winning the awards,” he says. He recorded the Life is Eazi: Accra to

Lagos mixtape the following year, which had the barrel-blasting Leg Over.

By all accounts his rise has been meteoric. But disregarding the legwork he did on his own would be unjust.

That was following a “little tour” he did in the UK. The proceeds from that were funnelled into filming music videos for a number of singles, one of which was the Sarkodie-guesting Anointing, about an anonymous she who is “not too fat, not too slim”, and “not too light, not too dark”; who “dey feel di anointing every time Eazi gives it to her”.

Bless up!

The first hint that he’d made it, that the plan was synching with his vision, was in 2016. He played two sold-out events within five days — the 8,000-capacity Ghana Party in the Park, held at Trent Park, Enfield. “This year I’ve just bought it up, so I’m now a coowner of that festival,” he says.

The second was a headliner show at the 02 Forum in Kentish Town. Featured on that date’s bill were other Afrobeats faves such as Eugy and Maleek Berry.

“I told everybody not to tell me about ticket sales. The venue was calling me to say do you wanna cancel?”

He went ahead with the show. “Right after that set, I called my mom and said yo mommy, I’m a musician now.”