For Mr Eazi, making his debut album, The Evil Genius, took a ton of introspection — so much so that it felt like therapy. The singer spoke to Rolling Stone in a recent interview about his LP and the process behind the project, which touches on themes of family, love, commitment, faith, and joy.
Eazi said he went to one of his producer’s homes just to “catch a vibe” and ended up recording three songs before he even knew he was going to start working on an album. “I made the music because I was trying not to make the music,” he said. “That’s where the magic is.”
The first song Eazi recorded on the LP was “Exits,” which ended up being the LP’s closer. “I was putting my mind on what was on my subconscious,” Eazi said, adding that it also took looking at a beautiful painting at a hotel he was at influenced how he approached his record: “I knew how I felt when I saw that. It felt so personal.” Eazi even commissioned 16 works of art by African artists to accompany each of the album’s tracks.
Eazi said that making the record with some of the artists featured on the project — Joeboy, Whoisakin, Tekno, and Efya, among others — “felt like a therapy session.”
“By the time I was out of that conversation, I just felt so light,” he said. “And the next time I listened to the record on the train, I put on my shades because I was almost crying… I’m crying because I’m listening to my own music.”
Eazi explained that he sometimes felt a bit “frustrated” while making the album because the content was getting too personal in the music. “It was new to me,” he said. He also described the album as “spiritual” thanks to how connected he felt to the 13 people he featured on the LP.
“The Pan-African scope gives the album a sense of grand ambition that fits a major artist making his most coherent statement after several high-profile years in the game,” read a Rolling Stone review of the album.
Since dropping The Evil Genius in late October, the musician joined Rawayana and Micro TDH on “Dame Un Break.”
