Did “YAGI” album finally prove rapper’s Hip-hop credentials?

Every time Lil Kesh’s name makes an appearance in a conversation about Nigerian Hip-hop, there’s always a voice that seeks to exclude it with the sentence “Lil Kesh is not a rapper’.

The musician’s rap credentials are being doubted time and again, and it must hurt for him, just as for anyone, who has struggled to become successful, but still encounter doubt about the very basics of their craft.

It’s the same way the repeated talks about Wizkid’s songwriting (or lack of it) argument, and Ice Prince’s rap music ability aren’t cool to the artiste. In public, they dismiss it arrogantly with the ‘as long as I’m making money, haters gon’hate’ defense speech or a variation of it. But when the cameras have long stopped rolling, and the public eyes have disappeared, it’s a cause for upset.

Who doesn’t want to get the respected for their craft, and spoken of in awe? Who doesn’t seek appreciation from the receptors and critics of their art? Most especially in Hip-hop, where the conversations are almost as important as the financials, with egos constantly being stroked and bruised. It’s a pride game, and these streets better validate your craft, or you would feel a certain sense of vacuum.

For Lil Kesh most especially, this must hurt. The young man is a rapper, who earned his come-up from street battles and rap battles, where he ate everyone who ever stepped up to him in Bariga, Lagos. Battle hardened and hustling, the song ‘Lyrically’, is as dope as any other rap song that you find obeying all the laws of Nigerian indigenous rap.

But money must be made, and after hooking up with Olamide and his raucous YBNL crew, it was only a matter of time before he looked for the most commercially viable singles to sell his art, and yield financial fruits for him. ‘Shoki’, ‘Gbese’, ‘Efejoku’, are three singles which made him gain in the money department, but shot his rap-value in the foot. “Too commercial, too weak”, was the Hip-hop verdict on many fronts.

The rapper had to take it on the chin, and continue his hustle. But this year, “YAGI”, his debut album, came into the mix, and showed a broader range of Lil Kesh’s talents. The dance tracks are well documented, ‘Lyrically’ showed up as a reminder, ‘Problem child’ has his Trap-readiness on display, ‘Ishe’ is conscious, while ‘Cause trouble’ offered another dimension of his street-credibility. With all of these, the doubts about him are not dead, but they have been reduced from their deafening and intrusive levels, to a minimum. His album is a ‘rap’ project, and one of the few good ones released this year.

What makes Lil Kesh endearing, (not just to Hip-hop fans, but everyone else), is that he combines the indigenous lyrical capabilities with pure confidence (telling the most openly hostile and judgemental genre in Nigeria that he is the real deal) and showmanship which have allowed him to be relatively successful.

Hip-hop fans can differ on our definitions of " rap skill" and we may end up with different conclusions about who has it, but one simply cannot ignore that at the moment when Lil Kesh dropped “YAGI” LP,  it was kind of hard to deny that he wasn't a bona fide Nigerian rapper in his right.