Summer is officially here, which means dancehall’s sweet riddim is at its peak.
On Friday (July 3), Billboard exclusively revealed that Nigerian Banku pioneer Mr. Eazy has tapped dancehall super-producer Dre Scurll to harness his energy for his new dancehall-inspired mixtape, Yard & Younga. Oh, and they’re bringing in the king of dancehall, Vybz Kartel. The kings of dancehall appear on the project’s lead single “Lambo,” also released today, marking their first reunion since 2021’s “Sekkle and Bop” and 2025’s “Dance Pon Me.”
“Eazy and I have been working on music together for years and have become good friends along the way,” Dre Scall told Billboard. “When we go to the studio, we inevitably end up creating music that weaves elements of dancehall and Afrobeats together. And those sessions became the starting point for this project. At some point, we realized we were building a bigger project and leaned into giving it shape.”
Eazy credits Nigerian dancehall-influenced skit artists like Baba Furyo, Kimi Ranky and Marvelous Benji as his gateway to the Jamaican-born genre, and his appreciation for the style has grown into his own catchphrase, “Zagadat,” an homage to Beenie Man. “I love the raw energy that comes from sound. It’s one of the purest expressions of music,” he says. “I think it captures another side of me.”
Vybz Kartel, off last month’s album God & Time (out June 5th), was a natural collaborator on ‘Lambo’. Perfect for summer, the bashment banger uses Yeezy’s signature clever wordplay to deliver earworm hooks that evoke both Jamaican patois colloquialism and Nigerian pidgin. “‘Rambo’ has a hypnotic quality built on deep bass that taps into the raw energy of street dance. I knew Kartel would know exactly what to do, and here he strikes the perfect balance with Yeezy,” says Dre Scurll.
‘Yard & Younga’ marks the natural evolution of a long-standing friendship with Skull, whose work on Kartel’s ‘Kingston Story’ (2011), Popcaan’s ‘Where We Come From’ (2014) and ‘Forever’ (2018) helped define the sound of dancehall in the 2010s. Notably, UK-based illustrator Keone Grandison hand-painted the single’s cover art, drawing inspiration from the folk and street art of West Africa and the Caribbean.
Years in the making, the mixtape is also a new addition to Eazi’s mixtape catalog, joining About to Blow (2013) and Life Is Eazi, Vol. 3. 1 — Accra to Lagos (2017) and Life Is Eazi, Vol. 2 — Lagos to London (2018). “With this project, we had a very clear concept of what we wanted to explore, and we intentionally kept it creatively fun during the process,” says Eazi. “It felt like a natural companion to the other mixtapes I’ve made.” Yard & Yang arrives later this year via Dre Skull’s Mixpak Records and Eazi’s emPawa Africa.
Listen to “Lambo” below.
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