November 7, 2009
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.
