What The F*ck Is A Jay Electronica?

THIS WEEK IN HIP HOP
As the hip-hop world pretends that Beanie Sigel’s union with G-Unit will lead to anything more than an extra press release and a few more copies of 50 Cent’s new album sold, actual rap music rolls on without giving a shit. And now, actual rap music seems primed to dump a load on the hip-hop world with the advent of Jay Electronica.

Jay Electronica is an up-and-coming rapper from New Orleans, though you’d be forgiven if you couldn’t have guessed that. Jay Elec shares much more in common with Nas as a rapper than N.O. brethren like Juvenile or Lil Wayne. He also prefers post-Dilla soul chops over N.O. bounce or country blues rap. While he doesn’t seem destined for superstardom (though, who knows? Can anyone ever predict these kinds of things?), he has been building steam among message boards and blogs for the past two years and I really think there’s something there. Put it this way: in an Internet world where rappers flood blogs with their freestyle-per-day-for-a-long-ass-time sabbaticals, Jay Electronica has still managed to cultivate an increasingly larger buzz by dropping half a song once every few blue moons. A radio rip of Jay’s “Exhibit C” – a radio rip that skips at times and cuts off short at the end, no less – hit the Internet a week and a half ago (which is about nine life cycles in Internet time) and people are still geeking on just how good he is. Considering this buzz and the list of influential friends Jay has made (e.g. he’s Erykah Badu’s newest baby-daddy, he produced the first track on Nas’ last album, he’s apparently BFFs with Mos Def, and he’s working with producer Just Blaze), the conditions seem fair for him to make some pretty big waves in music. Here’s an all too-short introduction to Jay Electronica’s music, a collection of songs that I hope show off his different strengths:

“Act 1: Eternal Sunshine”
This is the first song that seemed to really put Jay on anyone’s radar. It’s a big flashy move, jacking the theme from a big indie movie hit and rhyming on top without any drums. But it still works. Here, Jay raps about his resistance to mainstream radio and TV. It’s a tired concept for indie rappers but Jay Electronica’s approach is wholly different. Indie rappers get so caught up in bitterness and believe that radio should play “good” music for the principle of rewarding “good” music. Jay is able to step outside of his own struggles as an artist and show what mainstream radio really means for real people, how it affects them. He explains that it’s bigger than just music. It’s about how people are able to connect with each other. That’s one of the key qualities about Jay Electronica’s music: he empathizes with people, not rapping to us, but for us.

“Bitches And Drugs”
Of course, one of the key qualities that you should be able to find in any rapper worth anything is the ability to just talk mad shit and make it sound real fucking pretty. “Bitches And Drugs” is just one of several such tracks that have rap nerds like me going “HOLY SHIT” in all caps. Framed as an answer to anti-Southern rap sentiment, Jay proceeds to prove the anti-South crowd wrong by spitting for the fences. Plenty to like here, if you like shit-talk: historical oppression shit-talk (“If rap was like blacks in the ’60s, I’m a white cop in riot gear ready to hose down/ Memo to all I’m setting you hoe’s down” and “Jaydolf Spitler, rap Hitler”), bi-lingual shit-talking (Spanish), rape shit-talk (“a shot of wheatgrass in the enema”), ninja talk (refers to himself as “sensei” and “emperor” at different times), and Biblical shit-talk (“burning niggas live the scripture”). It’s a big, fat messy collage that doesn’t seem to mean anything until you start replaying it over and over and over again and you see how he includes all of this as a way to sneak in something to really think about in the guise of a fucking awesome rap verse. Now you see why they call Jay Elec the next Nas.

“Exhibit A (Transformations)”
Jay finally crafts like an actual song with structure and everything, thanks no doubt to producer Just Blaze. Like “Bitches And Drugs”: this ends up being another collage but one that also includes the present-day politics of Katrina recovery with some autobiography tied in…along with the impressive shit-talk. Another thing that sets Jay Electronica apart from some of his contemporaries like Drake, Kid Cudi, or Wale is that this guy has been through some shit. Like real shit. Homelessness. Katrina. So while Drake and Wale spit empty punchlines and Kid Cudi whines about suburban life, Jay Elec takes his experiences, tries to make sense of it, then spits his wisdom through the music so that we can benefit from his pain. Again, empathy.

“Googly Eyes”
Shit-talking in the context of hollering at a girl (you should see now how important shit-talking is in rap). It’s funny how, as much as hip-hoppers love technology, they still want to pretend to “keep it real” and hide their affinity to technology because the Internet doesn’t have anything to do with the streets, obviously. Jay doesn’t care so much. Here, he incorporates the ubiquity of Internet usage into his rhyme, effectively laying the foundation for a new rap language. He also addresses the current state of rap music, how “Nas said ‘hip-hop is dead,’ what these other cats spit is eulogy.” It’s just great how Jay Elec can so easily speak with the rap music landscape. More stuff to ponder in the form of shit-talk.

“Exhibit C”
On Jay’s last verse: “They call me Jay Electronica/ Fuck that! Jay Elec Hannukah/ Jay Elec yamulka/ Jay Elec Ramadan Muhammad Asalam Alakum/ Rasoul Allah supana watallah through your monitor.” Besides sounding real sick off the tongue, Jay goes beyond rap and speaks to the current political landscape. In just these few bars, he tries to connect the Jewish people and the Islamic people together, offering himself up as a sort of bridge who these two groups can inhabit to find each other. It’s very much like how Nas likes to paint himself as a Christ figure. The difference is that Nas wants to be a savior. Jay seems more concerned with actually saving people, connecting to people, addressing real issues that affect people (as opposed to issues that mostly just intellectuals care about, like whether or not to say “Nigga”). And so maybe without even knowing it, he again responds to the rap music landscape by taking ’90s NY hip-hop – which is something regurgitated by rap nostalgists – and injecting into it a sense of compassion and empathy.

If you are interested in getting more of Jay Electronica’s music, the Kevin Nottingham blog has collected most of Jay’s material into a single file for download.

by Quan Vu