The most telling detail about “Remember That” is not who is on it, but what it sounds like. The new single from Mr Eazi and Dre Skull reaches back to the minimalist dancehall of the late 90s, the era of spacious rhythms with names like “Showtime,” “Bruk Out,” and “Bookshelf,” when bashment was raw, skeletal, and uncompromising.
Cham is the perfect fit for that sound, and not by accident. The Jamaican veteran helped define that exact period with tracks like “The Mass” and “Boom,” then brought the whole feel roaring back into the mainstream with “Ghetto Story” in 2006, a global hit that reminded everyone where his roots were planted.
“Remember That” is one of two singles from “Yard & Yanga,” the dancehall project Mr Eazi and Dre Skull have been building together. The first single, “Lambo,” dropped in July and featured Vybz Kartel, so the bar for guest appearances was already sitting pretty high before Cham stepped in.
The title of the project carries real meaning on both sides of the Atlantic. Yard” is Patois slang for Jamaica, while “Yanga” is Nigerian Pidgin for flexing or showing off, and together they frame exactly what the project is trying to do, which is trace the deep, living connection between West African and Caribbean music.
Dre Skull, who produced Vybz Kartel’s “Kingston Story” and Popcaan’s “Where We Come From” and “Forever,” has been one of the architects of modern dancehall’s sound for well over a decade.
His read on what Mr Eazi brings to this record is straightforward: “These records show Eazi’s versatility, playing the smooth lover one minute and jumping to the rambunctious deejay the next.”
Mr Eazi, who helped push Afrobeats into global consciousness with hits like “Leg Over” and “Skin Tight,” has not exactly been hiding his dancehall instincts.
He has been nodding toward the genre since his earliest singles in the 2010s, and the friendship between him and Dre Skull goes back far enough that this project feels like a natural arrival rather than a calculated pivot.
The two previously worked together on “Sekkle and Bop” with Popcaan, and on last year’s “Dance Pon Me,” which leaned into dancehall pop territory. “Yard & Yanga” sounds like it is going somewhere harder and more rooted than that.
Mr Eazi put it plainly when describing where he sits in all of this. In an alternate universe, I would have been an Afro-dancehall artiste,” he said. “This is dancehall but my own interpretation.”
That tension between belonging to a genre and reinterpreting it from the outside is exactly what makes the project worth watching as more of it surfaces.
