The Player
Elijah Eminue hails from Mbo Iga in
Akwa Ibom State. An undergraduate of Mechanical Engineering at the
University Of Uyo, he is a rap music hopeful plying as L-J’esus. “The
‘L-J’ part of my moniker is from my first name, Elijah,” he said. “The
‘esus is a suffix that signifies love for Jesus and that I am the rap
saviour; so I am L-J’esus a.k.a Saviour of Rap”
The history
A rapper, singer and music producer,
L-J’esus said it all started in the church choir he joined as a boy.
Exposure to different music channels did the rest. “When I was younger,
I loved music so much that I joined the church choir. Afterwards,
seeing the likes of MC Hammer and Heavy D on TV, I decided to become a
rapper too,” he explained.
Although he said he wrote his first rap
verse at age 13, he never pursued rapping professionally until 2005.“I
started music professionally in 2005 in a group called Southernaz with
two other friends. We worked on a 14 tracker debut “I’m a Southerna”
that didn’t make it to the stands although we rocked a couple of shows
and raised the level of hip-hop in our home base. After a while, we
grew into a bigger group called D Cartel birthed from a coalition with
another group, and recorded ‘Eyen Akwa Ibom’ a smash hit in Uyo.”
Eventually the group disbanded before releasing an album and the
members pursued different interests. On relocating to Lagos, L-J’esus
met with singer Spydaman ‘‘we got close and did shows together, we’ve
done a lot of shows together that now I am like his back up artist,” he
explained.
The influence
Having listened to a lot of western
musicians, his music is mostly influenced by them. “I used to watch a
lot of shows on television; I got really attracted to the musical
channels. I enjoyed watching Heavy D, MC Hammer, and more recently I
draw influences from Juelz Santana and Jay-Z,” L-J’esus said.
Although he admitted it could be tough,
merging schooling with plying as an artist, he said he coped by
striking a balance between both. “Somehow I always strive to balance
both. When school is in session, I slow down a bit and just do shows
within Uyo if it doesn’t clash with my academic activities,” he
revealed. He hopes, with music, to “inspire people, get paid and
popular”.
The music
In a bid to promote his act, L-J’esus
is currently promoting two singles off his soon to be released mixtape,
‘Blasphemixtape’. Typical of all mixtapes, the tracks are samples of
already acclaimed songs. The first, a cover of Rihanna’s ‘What’s My
Name’, retains Rihanna’s chorus while the other, ‘100 Bars’ was laid
without a hook over Dagrin’s ‘Pon Pon Pon’ beats.
Even though it is still too early to
deduce his music making ability from sampled tracks, his use of
metaphor and wordplay on the tracks are awesome that you have to
believe he has what it takes.
The forecast: bright
