Jay Electronica's Album
is "Scary Good"
According to Jay-Z, the Jay Electronica album is nearly finished, and it's crazy good. So we'll probably never hear it, or it will come out in five years. Lyrically, the dude is just ridiculous. So, should we be excited that this album is "Coming Soon"? I would like to be, but here are some reasons I'm not.
- This is coming out on Jay-Z's label. Hov might be the Mike Jordan of rap, but he also might be the Mike Jordan of owners too. Do you remember how life was for Def Jam artists under Jay's reign? Marketing budgets? Yeah right.
- What did you think of J. Cole's album? I don't think anyone necessarily hated that album, but I also don't many people remember it.
- He's too good as a mixtape rapper. Is there such thing as a good mixtape rapper with good albums also? Wale's Attention Deficit is probably the best official debut album by a mixtape rapper, and even that one let plenty of people down. (We'll revisit this issue down the road.)
I sincerely hope this album is great. Realistically, if Hova gave this dude beats from his usual producers, Electronica could legitimately make a classic. (Whatever the fuck that means anymore.) I wonder if what Hov likes about this guy is the same thing that he fears - he's weird. What I mean is that Hov's got a reputation for liking indie bands like Animal Collective. (Or at least attending their shows to promote the gentrification of Brooklyn.) Most of Animal Collective's music sounds like an orgy of noise involving Sonic Youth and Pink Floyd. And Electronica is weird, at least by rap standards, and doesn't really have singles. The closest he's had to a marketable single is "Exhibit C", and that doesn't even have a hook. I personally love it when songs forgo a hook in favor of pretty much anything else, but the independent promoters who pay DJ's to play the kind of nonsense that "Urban" radio stations play don't. (Nikki Minaj featuring Drake anyone?) Even Hova's, ahem, "connections" might not be enough to help market a rapper who once made a fifteen-minute song where he rapped over a beat that was made entirely of samples from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. You know Hov knows how to "sprinkle in...to keep the registers ringing", but hopefully on this one he just "lets 'em walk through the hood." I've got low expectations, but high hopes for this project. If it never comes out, I hope we at least get a leak of the unfinished work, since that would probably be better than the finished product.
Check out an example of the unmarketable greatness:
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