Nigerian emcee, Jude “MI” Abaga was born in Jos, Plateau State to Pastor and Mrs. Agaba. At a young age, some of his biggest musical inspirations were Ms. Lauryn Hill, Bob Marley, Jay-Z and DMX. He started sampling Lauryn Hill and DMX as early as 1998. While studying business and engineering at Calvin College in Machigan in the US, he became heavily interested in poetry and spoken word. He also started to regularly perform at his school’s hip hop shows. He gained the majority of his popularity in 2003 when he returned to Nigeria and released his first mixtape, along with his most popular single, “Safe”. This track earned him awards at the Nigerian Music Video Awards, & City People.
His recent 2009 single, “Somebody Wants to Die”, M.I Agaba (with the help of his friend and emcee Ice Prince) is sending a warning message to Iceberg Slim who had recently mentioned him in a previous song. He’s sending a warning to other rappers as well. This slight beef started when Iceberg Slim released his single entitled “Mr. International where he said the lines, “Am I better than M.I? I don’t know. Am I? Matter of fact you should ask M.I”. This prompted M.I to write and release “Somebody Wants to Die,” basically telling Slim to watch his mouth before it comes back around. In less than 48 hours of M.I’s song release, Slim released another diss track entitled “Assassination” which didn’t gain much popularity. M.I ended up gaining more fans from the beef that Slim and ended up having more overall hit records.