#Jay electronica album movie

Though Jay-Z may be motivated and streetwise, taking shots at critics while bringing it back to his rap heyday, Jay Electronica remains cerebral. The album also features The-Dream, Travis Scott and production from AraabMuzik, Swizz Beats, HIT-BOY, Khruangbin, No I.D, The Alchemist, all of whom adhere to Jay Elec’s trademark washed-out psychedelia. They exchange epic verses in a style that’s inevitably similar to Raekwon and Ghostface Killah on ‘Only Built 4 Cuban Linx’. ‘A Written Testimony’ retains coherency due to Jay Z’s more grounded raps. With off-kilter, non-metronome production, Jay Elec does as he pleases, dipping when he wants into his preferred subjects such as “ the honourable minister Louis Farrakhan / to Serge Gainsbourg or Madonna or a podcast on piranhas”. Putting his eloquence and opulence on display, Jay Z really goes for his detractors: “Why would I sell out? I’m already rich, don’t make no sense / Got more money than Goodall, a whole NFL bench… When I die, please don’t tweet about my death.” In that one verse, he grounds the album, stopping it from drifting too aimlessly. On the stand-out, Electronica-produced ‘Flux Capacitor’, Jay-Z shows skills displays skills that had been AWOL for 20 years, spitting, “ Throwin Roc Nation brunches, that’s a feast / For Non-Believers, I created my own Easter / Evidence for your reverence / Why would I not have a watch like a Saudi prince?” He sounds like the king of the genre again. Other than the sampled speeches of Elijah Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan, the first voice on the album is also the last voice, that of an uncredited artist who comes to dominate the album, spitting extended verses on eight tracks: Jay-Z.Īs a 50-year-old billionaire, Jay-Z doesn’t have to rap any more, but here he does so with aplomb, sounding sharper than he has at any point in almost 20 years. That’s because this isn’t a Jay Electronica solo album, despite what the marketing says. Yet, while this is the most anyone has heard from him musically in over a decade, there’s a sense of reticence throughout the LP. Electronica excels on a technical level throughout. ‘A Written Testimony’ is a 39-minute, 10-track project that offers all the usual Jay Electronica tropes: complex rhyming patterns, double and triple entendre, lyrics across various languages laid over psychedelic production with minimal drums. Frustration at lack of material was part of being a Jay fan. In time, he became a myth, exacerbated by the fact that ‘Act 1’ remained the closest thing to an album he released.Įach of his guest features – on Big Sean’s ‘Control’, on ‘Hard 2 Face Reality’ with Justin Bieber – became an event, a chance for fans to broach the topic of a possible album, which seemed like it would never arrive.

Jay Electronica was, briefly, the most exciting rhymer on the planet. But it was the 2009 Just Blaze-produced ‘Exhibit C’ that immortalised the rapper.

#Jay electronica album movie

The one-track 15-minute EP turned heads thanks to poignant bars over Jon Brion’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind movie score a change of pace in an age where everything was auto-tuned. It’s nearly 13 years since Jay Electronica uploaded ‘Act 1: Eternal Sunshine(The Pledge)’ to Myspace.