MI Exclusive: 12 Things You Should Know About Illegal Music 2

By Osagie Alonge

Jude ‘M.I’ Abaga has had impressive runs with the release of his albums ‘Talk about it’ ‘MI2’ and mixtape ‘Illegal Music’ in the past. He’ll be hoping to do the same when he drops his ‘Illegal Music 2’ mixtape in a matter of days.

NET got chatting with the Chocolate City rapper who broke down the mixtape in detail.

So, right from the horse’s, here are 12 things you should know about his upcoming project…

1. It’s better than Illegal Music the first edition. It has more musical growth, it has more interesting samples, and it has better raps because I featured a lot of great rappers, a lot of great singers too.

2. People don’t know that I produce beats but I produced about 90 per cent of the mix tape on my own, and what is interesting is that on this project I switched from Sonar to Logic. (I know this is probably like boring geek stuff to most of you guys)

3. Controversial gist here (Laughs). So I wanted to do a song with Iceberg Slim on this project and I thought it would be cool to do a remix of ‘Deuces’ called ‘Truces‘, however I saw the Jimmy JATT freestyle and I wasn’t too happy about that. So yeah, that killed that idea.

4. On the song ‘Beg for it‘ featuring Matronomy and Funbi, I used two different samples. The shaker on it is from a Robin Thicke song, and the sample on the chorus is a Drake song.

5. I basically recorded the whole of Illegal Music 2 with the worst case of Writer’s Block I have ever been through. It took me months sometimes to finish a verse. For all artistes out there, you gotta learn to pace yourself because you can definitely overwork yourself.

6. At the end of Illegal Music 2, I had to bury my Behringer B2 Mic, which I had used almost throughout the whole of MI2 and the Illegal Music 2. Good bye Mic… I’ll miss you, sort of. Say hello everyone to the new mic on the block; My Rode mic.

7. While recording ‘superhuman‘ with HHP, he spoke of his friend who was seriously ill. A few weeks after returning to South Africa, he tweeted at me to tell me his friend had passed away. May his soul rest in peace.

8. Kid Konnect sent me like 20 beats for illegal music, and at the last moment, we decided to use all that music for a different project called ‘A Kid Called Abaga‘. Watch out for that. And shout out to Kid Konnect.. He is a real brother… Few of those left!

9. My favourite session of the lot was probably working with rap duo Show Dem Camp. We just had fun, chatted and laughed all day till the song was done. In other news, buy their album. It is truly a hip-hop classic.

10. There will be no ‘Choc Boy’ song. Jesse jags and Ice Prince were, and are both so busy, it’s hard for schedules to meet up. So to make up we are thinking of doing a whole Choc Boy album.

11. My fav sixteen (more like 32) bars of the mixtape are by this guy called Bogey. I don’t think anyone this year can have an ‘iller’ intro to a verse. He goes, ‘I love hiphop to death I am Romeo in a body bag‘. Whoa! He also says the line about eating clowns so they digesting (die jesting). Watch out for the guy.

12. I made this as an ode to hip-hop, with a focus to promote upcoming rap talent. It is probably the most selfless I have been musically. I wanted everyone to sound their best on it regardless of how it made me look. I often tell rappers ‘Come harder.. This is illegal music 2’. So as you listen, get to know a lot of the guys..

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