Unpiano | Music Blog

//photo by erykah badu

I am usually the first to admit my mistakes so here goes..

I’m so behind in my hip hop that I am still catching up from last year and when I feel like I need a cram session, I hit the music blogs. I was browsing through Jeff Weiss’s excellent ‘best of 2009′ list and when it came time for the number one slot I was totally taken aback. Really? Jay Electronica as the best song of 2009? See, the reason I was so surprised is that I am shallow and lazy. I had been hearing about him for a minute but had always been wary of the word “Electronica” (due to it’s negative connotations) and when I finally gave his Eternal Sunshine track a chance last year, I played it off quickly as too gimmicky. Okay, so now I have dropped the ball twice and I’m looking at number one on the list with much skepticism..

It only took me one listen of ‘Exhibit C” to be convinced. Let it be said that Jay Electronica is the second coming of hip hop and whenever it is that his long-awaited album finally drops, will change the way people hear rap music. I know that’s a strong statement but when you look at the respect that he has gathered from everyone around him without even putting out an album, it becomes evident that people are waiting with baited breath. They have been waiting for a rapper to bridge all the gaps and Jay does it effortlessly. The other part of the reason Jay is such an admired figure is that he seems truly humble and thankful for any support given his way. It’s like the man says “I got a lot of family, you got a lot of fans”. His story is really interesting and if you get done with that, take a look at this link for and in-depth follow up. I don’t do this very often, but Douglas Martin described the man perfectly, so I’m gonna pull a quote on this track and why it’s so incredible:

“Nas hit him up on the phone, said, “What you waiting on?” Tip hit him up with a Twit, said, “What you waiting on?” Diddy’s sending texts every hour on the dot, saying, “When you gonna drop that verse, nigga? You taking long!” The whole hip-hop world is waiting on Jay Electronica, the New Orleans-bred nomad, to drop the classic that literally everyone knows is in him. Over dramatically-triumphant production by Just Blaze (a man with the preternatural ability to make any rapper, let alone one who is actually great, sound like a god), Jay Elect composedly goes over his own backstory, homeless and sleeping on trains, all stoned and existential, gaining and losing money from shooting dice.

Not since “Nutmeg” has someone with a pop guard in front of his face sounded so larger than life, but where Ghostface created a classic rap song through stream-of-consciousness poetry written in jail, Electronica uses a dexterous and percussive flow to drop crazy scientific metaphors, ingest rappers and defecate their jewelry, squint his eyes at fake gangsters (”You sound real good, and you play the part well/But the energy you giving off is so unfamiliar”), and– probably greatest of all– evokes that nostalgic feeling of the days before rap became a cash cow and was primarily the world’s most exciting artistic medium. Reverend Run rocking Adidas out on Hollis Ave, indeed. On “Exhibit C”, Electronica crams so much intelligence, so much experience, so much heart into one song, that it’s easy to see why the whole rap world– from the bloggers all the way up to the legends– are doggedly checking their watches and tapping their feet, impatiently waiting on pins and needles for Electronica to deliver his full-length debut. And that, my friends, is how an incomplete version of a radio-ripped track became the best rap song of 2009. Abracadabra.” -Douglas Martin

Jay Electronica – Exhibit C
Jay Electronica – Exhibit A (Transformations)
Jay Electronica – Suckas
Jay Electronica – The Pledge (Eternal Sunshine)

Bonus:
Just Blaze’s beat deserves a listen on it’s own. It’s probably the best production I have heard since Hi-Tek’s beat for ‘Respiration’..

Jay Electronica – Exhibit C (Instrumental)

This entry was posted on Friday, April 16th, 2010 at 12:00 am by Jesse and is filed under Hip Hop, Second Coming, Soundtracks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.