He weighs each word carefully and weaves in his own arcane theology. Whether you take his faith at face value, the way he raps about it is mathematical-creating this impressive symmetry out of his life where there seemingly wasn’t any before. On “The Neverending Story,” he turns his origin story into a fable in which religious conviction saved him from destitution and hopelessness. The teachings are his backbone and he uses them to lock horns with the devil. Through the NOI, as a young man, he found black power and unity, self-sufficiency and self-improvement. It has touched artists from Wu-Tang Clan to Common, but Jay Electronica is curiously the rapper closest to the Nation of Islam and also the most cagey about his ideology. Rap is no stranger to Five-Percenter rhetoric. The unobtrusive but marvelous production allows Jay Electronica to be heard with the greatest clarity he enunciates each syllable as if etching it into stone. Even “The Blinding,” which is split between booming Swizz Beatz and AraabMuzik chant music and elegant Hit-Boy dinner party rap, finds its way onto this tapestry. The beats on “Ghost of Soulja Slim” and “Ezekiel’s Wheel” affix understated drum kits to fuzzy, lo-fi samples that sound culled directly from TCM standards. The music of “A.P.I.D.T.A.” is so untouched that the sampled band, Khruangbin, is credited as the producer. follow his lead with gorgeous, unadorned flips. He produced most of the album himself, but the Alchemist and No I.D. These beats have a subtle grandeur to them that suits the gravitas with which Jay Elec performs. Whether the raps are from scribbled verses stashed away in Moleskines since the late 2000s or produced during the 40-day period of inspiration, the album sounds current because Jay Electronica’s rapping is immediate and immutable.Ī Written Testimony is largely defined by the space between every note and word. With the exception of “Shiny Suit Theory,” these are new songs, or, at least, previously unreleased ones. After waiting more than a decade for an album that will likely never come, fans instead received a brand new album only a few months after its announcement, one made in “40 days and 40 nights”-a period of great biblical significance (Jesus fasted, Moses waited on Mount Sinai for God’s law, Elijah fled in the wilderness). An album called Act II: Patients Of Nobility (The Turn) had been in the offing since 2010, but a sequel three presidential terms in the making carries too much baggage. Dre scrapped the expectation-bogged Detox for Compton, Jay Elec (mostly) starts fresh here. “From a hard place and a rock to the Roc Nation of Islam/I emerged on the wave that Tidal made to drop bombs,” he raps on “Ghost of Soulja Slim.” From this well of deep faith, he summons rap performances that seem to defy space-time.
In just under 40 minutes, Jay Electronica erects monuments to Allah, NOI founder Elijah Muhammad, and Roc Nation overseer JAY-Z, who is at his side for nearly the entire album serving as sergeant-at-arms. But it’s also a record about the scrutiny of an insatiable public, one that leans on higher powers amid self-doubt. First and foremost, it is a prayerful offering that expresses the many spiritual and communal virtues he has internalized. It is a mystical, distinctive work that nearly lives up to all the lore surrounding the rapper. The wait for his debut album has been so long that it became more of an ancient prophecy than a movable release date.īut the album, A Written Testimony, has finally materialized. The selection of songs Jay Electronica has released over his career has drawn from all of this, only he’s put out as many of them in 13 years as some prolific rappers put out in a few months. The ghostwriting claims were disputed, he has never released a song with an original Dilla beat, and many count him as a footnote left in Kendrick’s wake, but he did actually end up between two of the wealthiest families in England. What was real and what was fiction began to blur, and what was real mattered less than what was interesting.
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