In following years, several loosies would pop up online, ultimately collected in the popular 2009 mixtape What The Fuck Is A Jay Electronica?, which furthered the hype. It felt different, and grand at the same time. Even more noticeable though, was his calm, self-assured flow, and the somewhat melancholy mood of it all.
The tape had been made utilizing the internal mic of his laptop and counted only fifteen minutes, but somehow also featured glowing recommendations from luminaries Erykah Badu and Just Blaze.
Jay Electronica recorded his first major feat Act I: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge) to a selection of drumless loops taken from Jon Brion’s soundtrack to the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. How very, very wrong a person can possibly be. That I appreciated what he did, and that hiphop what eventually be thankful, precisely because he was taking the time it needed. I dapped him up, and told him not to worry about the people asking what was keeping his debut album. It was history in the making, and we were there to witness.Īfter an absolutely raucous half hour, the man of the hour leisurely made the rounds through his audience, who circled around him like apostles whose messiah has just been revealed to them. As if all those years had been working towards this point. And Jay Electronica felt like the culmination of it. It was a time in which the power of major label marketing machines seemed broken by a small army of online rap connaisseurs and mixtape DJ’s. Add to that the fact he came up through posting tracks on Myspace during what would retrospectively become known as the ‘blog era’. And the way in which he married the then already dominant south and hiphop’s New York roots into the same person, made him a great unifier amongst all who heard him. His distance to rap materialism and penchant for spirituality immediately set him apart from many of his peers. He repped New Orleans’ Third Ward Slum while rapping about the time he was homeless, drifting through New York. Here was the new Rakim, Nas and Jay-Z rolled into a single entity.
#Jay electronica and erykah badu full
It was Friday night, February 19th 2010, when Jay Electronica pulled the full, delirious crowd of Amsterdam’s Sugar Factory onto the stage, to join him in his performance of “Exhibit C.” That is, almost the full crowd, since after a brief moment of doubt, I decided to remain on the balcony to fully take in the glorious spectacle unfolding below. Jaap van der Doelen might pay $300 to the court to change his name like Cassius.
In 2010, Electronica officially teamed up with music mogul JAY-Z‘s Roc Nation.Ī debut studio album from Jay Electronica has been anticipated ever since he emerged with his 2007 mixtape ‘Act I: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge)’, and has been promised since he signed to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation in November 2010.Please support the last real independent rap blog standing by subscribing to Passion of the Weiss on Patreon. The project came over 10 years since Jay entered the mainstream music biz spotlight. The listening party for A Written Testimony was canceled due to coronavirus, so the album was livestreamed, which provided its own set of issues. Technical difficulties aside, A Written Testimony is here and features James Blake, Travis Scott, Khruangbin, The-Dream, and so much Jay-Z you’ll wonder if Kanye is sitting on his ranch in Wyoming, jealous of the bond between Jays Z and Electronica. Well, technically 35 days later, the album is here, although the rollout hasn’t gone exactly according to plan. The project premiered across streaming platform TIDAL. After years of waiting, Jay Elect came through Thursday night with an initial online listening party and then full release.
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