M.I aka “Yxng Dxnzl” should take a chill pill

‘A Study on Self-Worth: Yxng Dxnzl’ is M.I Abaga’s fifth studio album. The second instalment of the much touted (and tweeted) Chocolate City’s L.A.M.B intervention, Yxng Dxnzl is 10 discrete tracks stitched together by snippets of psychotherapy sessions lasting about 39 minutes.

Interestingly, each track’s title is instructional and about the length of a short sentence. For example, “Love never fails, but where there are prophecies love will cease to remain.” Coming five months after M.I’s Rendezvous playlist, the rapper cum executive shows without equivocation that his creative juices are flowing.

He has also served as foreman of L.A.M.B providing A&R, production as well post-production services.

Yxng Dxnzl drops at a time when rap music, globally and locally, has been dichotomised. Globally, rap music has been shorn of its gangster garb. In its new incarnation, rappers surf on trap drumbeats with a post-millennial attempt at being deliberately in-articulate. Of course, OGs are having none of this!

On the local scene, a handful of renegade rappers subverted the blossoming Hip-Hop milieu for their own gains by deploying local languages and their coup has been successful.

This came on the heels of M. I’s double success with his albums and mixtapes. At the time, he…