MI Abaga: The Lion of the Tribe

Adeyemi David .O

4 min readApr 27, 2021

African rapper number 1 yio

MI microphone magician o

Everybody puta nu ka anyi tewu ya tewu ya (Everybody come out let us dance and dance)

E woo M I ga egbu mmadu o (E wooo MI you will kill somebody)

MI Abaga x Flavour [African Rapper]

How can you not salute at the mention of Jude ‘MI’ Abaga? How? A whole African number one! The fearless lion of the Tribe! Tochi’s daddy.

Upon moving to Nigeria in ‘03, of course, it wasn’t easy to thrive in an industry dominated with men like Modenine and Naeto C. He rose to prominence in 2006 when his first song, Crowd Mentality became popular. His prominence led to another great song, Safe which was a combination of different ‘hot’ tracks at the time.

In 2008, MI released his first album, Talk About It, and in 2009, he released his second studio project, a mixtape titled Illegal Music where he stamped his feet on the rap culture in Nigeria by proving his lyrical prowess.

The influence of MI cannot be overemphasized when talking about the evolution of rap, especially from 2010 when he released one of the best albums from a Nigerian, MI2: The Movie. That year, Jude won his second most number of awards after 2009.

Four years later, MI released a ‘welcome back’ track titled Chairman. He stamped his position as Chairman and king of rap. This track was followed by another track titled King James where he went hardcore and bodied it.

In 2014, the rapper released his third studio album, Chairman which personally, I feel is the most planned album because the planning was well detailed especially the names of the tracks (flip sides and a middle). Amazing, right?

MI went on and on to release Illegal Music 3 in 2016. A playlist, Rendezvous and an album titled Yxng Dxnzl: A Study on Self Worth both in 2018. And in 2020, he released an EP, Judah and a joint album with A-Q, The Live Report.