Across the euphony of sound styles sweeping across Afrobeats, Mr Eazi’s Banku is one fusion that’s impossible to ignore. Since his 2013 debut mixtape, About To Blow, this Banku sound, blending elements from Ghanaian highlife bounce, Nigerian chord progressions and a unique singing approach that emphasises melody over percussion, has become a household favourite for Afrobeats lovers.
Now, after a decade of gaining popularity across the global music scene, with a slew of mixtapes, EPs, and heavyweight global collaborations with the likes of Beyonce, J Balvin, Bad Bunny, among others, the Banku pioneer, born Oluwatosin Ajibade, is back with his official debut studio album dubbed, The Evil Genius.
The 16-track album paints a portrait of Mr Eazi’s personality, with every fusion from the vintage highlife Fefe na Fefe to the choral, Exit (featuring Soweto Gospel Choir) feeling like intimate, intentional brushstrokes of his legacy as a business mogul, musician and family man. The record is his most personal work by far, and it sees him diving deeply into strong themes around love, betrayal, loneliness, and family, expressed through three distinctive movements or acts, throughout the album.
From hustling across Ghana’s bustling nightlife scene as an undergraduate student, to delving into mining and exportation, and dominating Africa’s music scene as a record executive, Mr Eazi’s pedigree as a serial entrepreneur is also an inspiring feat to similar musicians on the continent.
On Evil Genius, Mr Eazi adds an extra layer of character to his discography as he commissioned and exhibited 16 original artworks from African visual artists to illustrate the album’s themes. He’s very particular about how he practices his art. “Freedom,” he explains, remains a driving force for his unique approach to art and business. “To fuel creative freedom, you need to make more money.”
Catching up with the emPawa record label boss and Latin Grammy-winning musician, he shares his inspiration behind The Evil Genius, as well as his intricate philosophies behind his versatile life as a music and business don, among others.

You’re stepping out with your debut album. How does it feel for you at this point?
I feel proud to be able to put this out in this form. And I just feel blessed to be able to have put this work together.

How long have you been working on creating this album?
Since February 16, 2021. So that’s like, two years and eight months. And for context, my last project, my last full body of work, I made it in like two weeks.

Are you serious?
I usually don’t take time to make music, because it’s vibes for me, but this is the first time this was not all vibes, in the sense that this is not an album. It’s a masterpiece and a piece of art that should be like in galleries and museums. And that’s why, you know, I’ve not done release parties, or, you know, what usually comes with album rollouts. And instead, we’ve been doing the exhibitions, the multisensory exhibitions, in art fairs and galleries of Somerset House in the UK and gallery 1967 in Accra. And there’s plan to bring the exhibition to Lagos and Dubai and New York, this will continue up until May 27 of next year.

You illustrated this album with visual arts, why?
Yeah, it’s just divine, and I’m even shocked this has been shocking to me, because there was no day that I sat down and said, ‘Okay, I’m going to make an album in 2021, on February 16.’ I had no plans to make an album. I was thinking of stopping to create music to just focus on the business of working with new artistes. I was trying to decide what my next path will be, and I recorded the first song, Exit, that featured the Soweto Gospel Choir. And that sort of started the process. I reluctantly recorded the song and I went to the Republic of Benin. The original reason for going to the Republic of Benin was to set up my company called Chop Life Gaming and to apply for my sports betting licence. I was working with the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Interior’s lottery board and I stayed at a villa that had art all over. So, I was surrounded by art. I started living there, even though my stay was meant to be one week, because I was just going to employ staff for the business.
But this villa has art all over and they said that there are different artists every month, and I didn’t really pay attention to the art, but from there I said okay let me start recording the album here in Cotonou, and I started and Cotonou became my base.
And during one of my trips back, I started bringing producers. It was like a joke, but I was making this album. And one of those days I came back to Cotonou, I worked from the villa, because my chef wasn’t around and I was walking into the hotel to eat. Then, I just saw this painting by Patrick O’Reilly hanging to my right. And you know, he drew a skeleton, the man and a woman, seated by the road and holding this rose flower, and the only thing that was alive in the picture was the rose flower. And I just stopped. I was spellbound, sort of like divinely drawn to that piece.
And I was just looking at it. And I was like, wow, this is so beautiful. And everybody was looking at me like, ‘What’s this one saying?’ I felt it was so beautiful. Then, we recorded the song ‘legalize’ on that trip. And I was like, ‘This is the piece.’ It was a representation of ‘legalise’, and I wanted to see the artist.

My team hooked me up with the artist I bought that piece and I bought like three more of the guy’s pieces, went to see where he was working and told him I wanted to collaborate with him to bring the song to life. And I’ve never seen any better description of the eternal nature of love and how love blueprint breeds new life you know, and that was it.
It was at that moment I knew that okay, this is going to be an album and I just knew at that moment that art was the central piece. I would then start purposely you know, looking for artists via going to art fairs and my team started sending me artists. Even my lawyer went to an art fair in Senegal and took pictures and sent them to me.
As I was going through the pictures, I saw one of the pieces from Atelier Zinkpe. And I knew immediately that this guy is going to paint this song. And just magically that’s how I commissioned every artist. It wasn’t like there was somebody else curating everything.
No, it was me seeing the artist’s work and immediately knowing this artist is going to paint this song. And, divinely, the artists will listen to the song and start telling me things about the song that I didn’t even know. I remember being on this call with Tammy Sinclair, who painted Oluwa Jo and when we started talking about the song, it became a very deep conversation speaking about our families and the pressures of making it. I think it’s something divinely orchestrated. I’ve just been going on this journey like a mad scientist – anywhere belle face, you know, and that’s anywhere the inspiration leads me. And it’s just beautiful to see it coming together now. And everybody’s thinking like, oh, yeah, this guy’s so strategic, so thoughtful, but the truth is that, I was just following my instincts, you know.

At what point did you have the title, Evil Genius?
I think it was this year, probably January or February. So, the original name that came to mind when I discovered this would be an album was Man at the Crossroads. I was recording in a studio called EYA Studio in Cotonou; a state of the art studio in Cotonou that nobody knows about. And one of my boys googled Man At A Crossroad and we saw, Legba. You know Ojuelegba – Legba the Yoruba mythical figure that stands in between life and death; that tricky figure. And you know we are in Cotonou and Benin, that’s the birthplace of Voodoo, and we’re looking at these symbols.
And we were like ‘Wow, okay, relax.’ So, I was pondering. I was like, yeah, but this just feels like the name of the album, because it’s a record of me at loads of crossroads in my mind, in my emotions, in my life. And, you know, up until January this year, it was still hypothetically going to be called Man at the Crossroads, but I wasn’t 100 per cent sure that that was it. I was feeling that there could be a better word or a better description for Man At A Crossroad.
And I knew the songs that would make it to the album, but I hadn’t selected the final order and all of that. And then in January I was speaking to an artist. There is a very big artist that is hotter than me – if you go by hit songs on radio and clubs – from Nigeria and I was trying to sign him. And he starts to advise me, saying, ‘Oh, you know, I’ve heard so much about you. You know, it seems like a lot of people don’t like you. They say you’re too calculative, you know, you’ve done this, you’ve done that. Like, you’re some evil genius or something.’ And I spent like an hour discussing with this guy saying, ‘Who told you that shit? Like, show me one person that I’ve stolen money or music rights from?

Go check out my records, you always see every person, even if it’s for a cough in the studio, get their credits.’ You know, I remember telling him that Juls produced Skin tight. He gets 15 percent of the sales on that record. Plus, he has 50 per cent of the publishing. Till today, tell me how many Afrobeats producers have 15 per cent? Just go do a survey. I’ve been fair in my deals. Joeboy, on his last two projects, owns all his masters.
So, I’m out there just trying to convince him that I’m not this bad guy. After some time, that is, after the call, I started to think ‘Why did I get so pissed, and why did I get so riled up by this, when I know the truth?’ As I started to think about it, I realised that that was the central theme of the album of my life. During those two and half years, I was on a journey of trying to control people’s perception of me. It’s like your career is about your public image and people have to like you or think you’re good so that they like your music.
And, soon, you don’t even know who you are again. When the lights and camera goes off, you don’t even recognise yourself and you can’t even be alone with yourself. And if you get so obsessed with that image, you can’t even focus on character; because it’s just that image. And so I decided to embrace that word, Evil Genius.
I was like, by embracing this, I can then look inward and say ‘Who am I? What are the most important things to me? What is in my subconscious?’ And if you go through track 1 to 16, you would hear me start by saying things that are profound. These were things that I’ve never even said to anybody. And you know, in our tradition, therapy is the new buzzword for us.
And this was the first time I was doing therapy on my own music. It wasn’t any more about vibes, about hits like Leg over or Any money wey I get. It was now me speaking, sort of like naked, and discovering myself. So, the title Evil Genius is embracing the worst version of people’s opinion in order to free myself to be able to look inward and say, who I am and describe myself through tracks 1 to 16. So that by the time you get to track 16, you’d have met me, you’d have met Tosin you know, in his naked form, not Mr. Eazi. And that’s why I said this is not an album; it’s a masterpiece, a piece of artists, first time ever, of contemporary African music, merging with, you know, Contemporary African visual art in this form.

What informed the vibe that you came with on this album, sonically?
I’ve been making very personal songs, so, I went for instrumentation that made me speak very personally and openly. What informed the instrumentation, or the beat selection, was my mood, or my subconscious. Like I said, I wasn’t trying to make an album. I was just trying to record my thoughts. I was trying to do therapy; this album could have been made for myself, you know, I made it for myself, and listened to it in my car, and enjoyed it for myself. I was making songs that I could relate to, you know. And that’s what has informed the song selection. I remember I would flag producers. I made like six tracks with P Prime. You know, fresh sounds, vibes, bangers that I will drop next year. But like, I just knew those songs weren’t for this album.

You are also a serial entrepreneur. What nudges you towards this line?
Freedom. Freedom is number one. It’s everything. If you look at emPawa Africa, it is one of the only labels that won’t tell you what you should make. We can suggest to you, but you, as the artiste, will choose what your next single is or who you want to work with, and we enable you to do that.
And for me, that’s what drove me to create my own label because I didn’t want to be in a position where some A&R is telling me how to make this music or who to work with , because I just want freedom. I am not saying this to reduce the importance of the A&R, but I prioritize freedom over anything.
And so creative freedom is the core thing that translates to my business decisions and economic freedom is the other thing. I don’t want to be in a business situation where I feel like I don’t have that economic freedom to make that decision. Look at this; if I don’t know what I’m making, but I want you to give me a budget. I don’t know whether I will even release this music, but I need you to fund a two and half year recording process. And this recording process is from Cotonou to Los Angeles, to New York, to London to Kigali to Accra. And I want you to just fund this, and then I come to you again and ask you to commission 13 artists across Africa and buy all this expensive artwork. And then I want you to fund an exhibition because that’s how I want to present it.’ You know, you’re going to ask me, ‘Where’s the budget? Where’s the profit and loss statement? How much have you made? How much are you going to make?’
Every artiste in emPawa decides what they want to do with their budget. And I’m not saying that’s the best model, because a lot of times you see that the creative artiste is not in the right place to make the decision because they don’t have the skill or they are too much in the trenches, or too sentimental: But because freedom is everything to me that’s how we do our business in emPawa. That’s why when we signed Fave, in 2021, we did the deal with her label. She had a manager. For instance, Kante in Davido’s album was supposed to be the last song in our deal, but she wanted to drop something else and we were okay with it.
The artiste must have economic and creative freedom and her team decided how they must spend their marketing dollars. Not us. You know, and the same thing for Joeboy, he decides what he spends on, you know? To fuel creative freedom, you need to make more money, because you won’t be free. How do you want to be free, when you don’t have money?

So, what is next for Mr. Eazi from here?
I don’t know, man. I don’t know what’s next. The only thing I know is I’m dropping this album at midnight. I want to do a few more exhibitions. And then I want to have a show that is totally produced from A to Z with the art, you know, intertwined. And on that show, I don’t want to perform any of my old songs. I just want to perform only the songs on the album or maybe it’s one show, maybe it’s five shows. You know, that’s the most immediate thing right now for the next six months. That’s where, you know, my spirit is leading me.