We are now getting the chance to listen to an era of rappers whose music is more heavily influenced by new age staples such as Drake and Kendrick Lamar than by any other generation of emcees before them.

I’m talking about rappers who don’t feel like the lines between hip-hop and melody still exist and even if they do, they don’t need a singer to hold their hand on a record before they’re able to cross. I’m talking about rappers who wear their heart on both sleeves and aren’t afraid to show it off like it’s a *expletive* ornamental bracelet. Black Magic is lord of that alternative space at the moment but his hip-hop influences come from an earlier era and his music is indigenous, so stylistically he’s very different from Drake and Kendrick. Oma Mahmud’s cloth however is more identical, the upcoming rapper is in his early-20’s, so you can hear the influences of the new age when he rhymes. 

The Kendrick influence is clear on Somewhere in Lagos’ opener and title track. In a commanding tone, Oma launches into a soliloquy about how “they” want to have him institutionalized and how he’s able to see through it. Life in Lagos must be tough at times, I’m sure, but if having to navigate through police checkpoints before crossing 3rd Mainland Bridge on your way to party at Vapors was the people’s only struggle, they’d grab it with both hands! The rapper is self-aware enough to berate himself for complaining about the trivial stuff, when there are families in Chibok, Borno who don’t know when or if their daughters are coming home.

The Drake influence is most apparent on the meandering “No Feelings” – there’s an honest dialogue about leaving exes but never really letting them go, about expectations from family members that he’s afraid he’ll never be able to meet and about using alcohol to escape the thoughts. The song starts off with a short, half-sung introduction and then proceeds to a slow bounce – the commanding voice returns as Oma rebounds the last few words of a new line before going to the next, for emphasis.

You tried to get me down (get me down) /

Boy, you don’t know the game (know the game) /

How long I’ve been around (I’ve been around) /

Girl, I’ve been balling for time and for time.

On the second verse, he quickens the pace, rapping in what’s probably the closest to his talking voice. At the end of the song, you might think that there were 3 different people on it but it’s just 1.

How a rapper so young recognized so early in his career that first – changing his name from the short-sighted kidPUSH to his government name Oma Mahmud was inevitable and that the sooner it was done the better, and second – vocal inflection could make his voice a tool to bring his storytelling and solid song-crafting abilities to life, is beyond me.

When the rapper tries to go from commanding voice to a gnarly growl on “Bury Demons”, his audio engineer lets him down slightly. The clattering sounds – cocked guns, haunting keys and thumping drums bleed into each other to the point that the song sounds noisy in parts and the angst that Oma is trying to communicate takes a back seat. The emphasis on the EP isn’t so much on what Oma is trying to say as it is on how he says it to deliver the perfect song. On the smooth Ride, a top-notch chorus from Nonso Amadi papers over the cracks in Oma’s teething rhymes. However, there’s no hiding place for the ordinariness on Won Le Bami. Oma wanders out of pocket with the beat a number of times and his featured guest Novakillz carelessly drops –

Young nigga, only 21, f*cking b*tches that’s 25 /

Know a n*gga who caught a body and he ain’t even doing 25.

I didn’t know Omole Estate had aje butter goons like that, who would have thunk it?

Even so, SIL is Lagos city from Oma and his friend’s POV. It’s not always relatable for everyone else but it’s delivered in their own version of alternative hip-hop, so it always sounds like it’s true to him and them and that’s what counts. This could very well become the new sound of non-indigenous hip-hop and in a few years, Oma Mahmud could very well be one of its most prominent voices.
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