Nigerians producers are tired, and we mean tired of hiding behind in shadows of our recording artists, crafting their beats while they get all the credit, fame and mullah. And it isn’t enough to ‘watermark’ songs with their signature catchphrases, they’re taking it one step further by creating and releasing instrumental EP’s that show the range of their abilities and the scope of their interests and influences. We started 2017 with GolddrumMachine’s masterful 808 CR and now the movement is spreading into the mainstream with in-demand producer Oluwasesan Salami Abbas (known to you as Sess Beats) dropping a mixtape of his own.

Sess Beats is far more commercial in his creative leanings and is best known for the superb work he did on Falz the Bad Guy’s sophomore album Stories That Touch, especially Bad, Badd0, Baddest that went on to become a cultural anthem. Considering Sess Beats works largely as a freelance producer untethered to any labels, it is amazing the amount of ground he has managed to cover since then. It makes professional and creative sense that Abbas would choose as his next project to take on an independent project.

On the PRBLM instrumental EP, Abbas works with a number of now saturated musical themes, using chopped and screwed vocal adlibs as percussive instruments and layering synths to shake things up. The production is lo-fi and a lot of the instrument sound decidedly electronic but on songs like Matter and Wind (Gimme More) it works to his favour, giving the music a nostalgic feel. Life is easily the most commercial song on the album, with native drums and a repetitive gong sprinkled through the entire thing for that high life feel that artists like Flavour N’abania always return to. He doesn’t stray too far from afrobeats, afro-trap and mild European EDM strains. It is a decent EP, but definitely not his best work.

Listen to the entire thing here.