![]() Take “Ghost of Soulja Slim”: with its Parisian-flavoured sample and drums that come down hard, this would have been a classic single if the artist had bothered to give it a standalone release. The production is that of a high-end product, yet the album remains rooted in the core tenets of classic hip-hop, meaning it never feels like Electronica is throwing out music crit bait or chasing classic status. Is A Written Testimony a classic? I know that I like it more and more with every passing month. How has Jay managed this? Firstly, and most obviously, there’s the quality of the music. Has the atmosphere of myth surrounding Electronica died down? If anything it has intensified. A big part of the mystery has been revealed the man behind the curtain finally exposed. Finally, we have a large enough discography to be reasonably described as a body of work. Then, like a miracle, 2020 saw the release of not one but two Jay Electronica records: the newly recorded A Written Testimony and belatedly unveiled Act II: The Patents of Nobility (The Turn). The would-be saviour of hip-hop would live like a rap Jules Whitfield. This was a character who would win many converts on his journey, I thought, but maybe never have the focus to finish an album. He connected with the crowd, but was so scattered and giddy that he couldn’t finish a song. When I saw Jay live in 2015 it all seemed to make sense. In the space where actual songs might have existed grew a legend-there are no limits to the potential quality of music you don’t hear. Yet the mythology around the man only grew as Jay’s movements and motives became harder to read and his inability to complete a a full-length record became the stuff of lore. Album deadline after album deadline passed Electronica’s momentum crumbled into dust. To many he was a soothing antiseptic to the Auto-Tune artists who were suffering an intense backlash. Jay emerged just as a certain profile of hip-hop purist was crying out for an artist with classic fundamentals: lyricism, mic skills, and affinity for samples. The birth of the Electronica myth was made possible not just by the quality of the music, but like so many things, because of timing. ![]() A part of me was like, “Wow, he doesn’t even need a decent rap name so he must be good!”) (I’ll admit, when I first heard about this guy I thought his name sucked and wasn’t appropriate at all. It certainly feels artistic-Jay was rapping over drum-less Jon Brion samples taken from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind the tracks have been referred to as “movements.” About a third of the project is dedicated to Just Blaze talking about Jay curing his boredom with hip-hop and Erykah Badu calling him “some kind of mythical creature who would have a bow and arrow on his back and wings under that bow and arrow.” Act I was heralded as seminal, important, and a masterpiece. The cultivation of a legend hit overdrive with the release of Electronica’s debut EP Act I: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge) in 2007. (Electronica did use Dilla internet beats for a few tracks, including “So What You Saying.”) One adventure saw him connect with J Dilla, notably strict when it came to choosing collaborators, which more or less came to nothing. Legend has it that he left his home city of New Orleans on New Year’s Day 1996, aged 19, beginning a wandering journey through hip-hop epicentres such as Philadelphia, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Detroit, and New York. To piece together Electronica’s life before the age of 30 you’d need a squad of private detectives, spiritual mediums, and The Goonies. And he seems an amiable fellow without the electrifying, spiritual presence of Prince. Jay has never been a recluse like D’Angelo was during his lean years-you could go to one of his shows or hit him up on social media. It’s true that he hasn’t exactly lived the life of Jeremiah Sand, setting up camp in the middle of nowhere with his acolytes. Where did this modern day myth come from and how did it grow? Electronica’s official line a decade ago was that he had no idea. So lord knows what he made of Jay Electronica, a rapper who for well over a decade boasted a solo output of just a handful of tracks, yet carried a sense of mythology more suited to Spartan heroes or Scottish aquatic monsters. According to Rock’s gospel, an oeuvre of just two records didn’t cut it no matter how deep the music’s greatness. It’s all body of work at the end of the day.” So said noted pop culturist Chris Rock to GQ around the release of D’Angelo’s third album Black Messiah when quizzed on whether D was a great artist.
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