Nigerian Afropop royalty Mr Eazi and influential producer Dre Skull have teamed with Jamaican dancehall icon Cham on the new single, Remember That.
The track is one of two singles from Mr Eazi and Dre Skull’s dancehall project, Yard & Yanga. This follows the July release of Mr Eazi and Dre Skull’s Lambo, featuring the unmistakable vocals of dancehall king Vybz Kartel. Remember That is a throwback to the minimalist dancehall of the late 90’s, when spacious rhythms with names like ‘Showtime’, ‘Bruk Out’, and ‘Bookshelf’ soundtracked arsenals of hardcore bashment anthems. Mr Eazi is joined on the track by Cham, who helped define this era with his rough-and-tough lyricism on tracks like The Mass and Boom before reviving the feel of the era with 2006’s global hit Ghetto Story.
“These records show Eazi’s versatility, playing the smooth lover one minute and jumping to the rambunctious deejay the next,” explained Dre Skull.
With a title that references both a popular Patois colloquialism for Jamaica as well as the Nigerian Pidgin term for flexing or showing off, Yard & Yanga is an Afro-diasporic celebration highlighting the longstanding link between West African and Caribbean music, and the ways in which they interplay. Years in the making, the project is the result of the longstanding friendship between Mr Eazi, who helped popularise Afrobeats globally through hits such as Leg Over and Skin Tight, and Dre Skull, the producer behind some of modern dancehall’s most celebrated releases including Vybz Kartel’s Kingston Story (2011) and Popcaan’s Where We Come From (2014) and Forever (2018) albums. Mr Eazi and Dre Skull previously collaborated on Sekkle and Bop (also featuring Popcaan), and last year’s effervescent dancehall pop single Dance Pon Me.
Dancehall has long been an ingredient in Mr Eazi’s sound, dating back to his very first singles in the early 2010s.
“In an alternate universe, I would have been an Afro-dancehall artiste,” explained Mr Eazi. “This is dancehall but my own interpretation.”
