Label: Storm/Trybe
‘I’ve been doing/it/ before tribesmen recorded their hits/ before everybody knew they could spit/I’ve been doing it.
…when it was all about the love/Before/radio created the buzz… before your folks thought rap was cool/when the only way out was school…/before y’all started going abroad/before 2face got the award…
…when the labels/wouldn’t give us a chance/before Psquare knew how to dance…
…long enough for me to say I’m king’.
This is the album where Lanre Dabiri, better known as elDee tells us all (including Psquare and 2face) that we’re his subjects. The above words, an excerpt from the first cut off his brilliant 16-tracked album presents a clever argument for his case. But, if El Dee Tha Don should become our paramount ruler, for the sake of longevity, what would happen to Weird MC and Baba Dee and De Weez and Dr Fresh?
READ: Undeniable Album Review – eLDee’s encore, worthy of respect and applause
But kingship apart, eLDee killed it with this one. From the intro skit, through to the last song, it’s easy to ignore the production and get consumed by the message the young man is trying to pass across. OK. So he throws a few stones at former band mate Freestyle. So he makes a few bogus claims (like owning several houses and businesses). So he sounds like he has to explain why he moved from Lagos to Atlanta, and why he ‘didn’t’ abandon the tribesmen…? All that aside, eLDee still made more sense on his debut solo album than most of his contemporaries will in their entire career.
In an era where the general focus was on the male-female sexual anatomies (a la D’Banj and Psquare) and get-rich-quick mania (a la Olu Maintain), it was refreshing to have the priviledge of listening to an LP like return of the king.
It’s so overwhelming that you’ll easily forgive the rapper for leaving his immediate constituency and flirting loosely with other styles and genres (as in ‘Champion, which would pass for an Eedris Abdulkareem song anyday). And it’s so easy to almost forget that that fiery track- freestyle can’t freestyle- where he throws lyrical venom on Freestyle is not on the album…
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