* Jay Electronica at the Highline Ballroom in NYC, by Willie Davis for the NYT.
I turn on MTV Jams sometimes, in 2010, and I wonder, Is this for real? Nah, it can't be. Can it? Yeah, hip-hop can be disappointing these days. But the genre that changed the world is not without true artistry. Look at Jay Electronica, tagged in Intersections in 2008 as the "most evocative and compelling contemporary" voice in hip-hop. He's only gotten better.
From the ruins of New Orleans, an enigmatic poet-sage who tackles the demons over a beat, Jay Electronica attempted two years ago to take on the tough hip-hop purists of New York City, and ... it didn't go well. Last week, he returned. He saw, and he conquered.
From Jon Caramanica in the NYT, on that failed last attempt:
He might also have never landed on "Exhibit C" the galvanizing single he released late last year that elevated him from a curiosity to a force. On it, over creeping, languorous soul, he details the steps that led him from occasional homeless drifter to idiosyncratic savior of New York rap classicism, opening with a devastating portrait of his early years:
When I was sleeping on the train / Sleeping on Meserole Ave. out in the rain / Without even a single slice of pizza to my name / Too proud to beg for change / Mastering the pain
With its hazy yet still crisp beat by Just Blaze, and its anti-commercial, chorus-free structure, "Exhibit C" quickly became a touchstone for preservationists of an outmoded style. His hometown notwithstanding, Jay Electronica is a rapper in the New York mold, and often an impressive one, which is why it must have been bewildering to him to be filleted so mercilessly by that New York crowd two years ago. And why, on Tuesday, he appeared so gratified by the response of the sold-out audience. Jay Electronica has become a folk hero, an anachronism, a living ghost.
Incredibly, Jay Electronica is as of yet unsigned to a major record label. The rapper is visible on Twitter, however. In some ways, it is the perfect hiding place.
(Yeah, please no more MTV.)