![]() The tune is one of the most popular ones from the opus for its somber, yet melodic tone. “A.P.I.D.T.A.” is the first song to generate a music video from the highly regarded, critically acclaimed album that features Jay-Z as a co-feature on nearly every track. The New Orlean emcee has recorded a new video stemming from the Grammy-nominated album A Written Testimony. It’s not all so pious: on Fruits of the Spirit, Electronica wades into the news cycle, packing references to the Flint water crisis, America’s controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and Palestine into just three lines before punctuated the section with a warning about, “ lies from the reporters”.Jay Electronica is back at it, after being a featured attraction at the Grammy Awards on Sunday. Universal Soldier sees Electronica repeat the word “Bismillah” – a phrase in Arabic that opens the Quran and means “In the name of God” – before referencing both Allah and Jesus Christ. Closely affiliated with the Nation of Islam for some years now, Electronica has made public appearances alongside prominent figures in the organisation such as Wesley Muhammad and Minister Hilary Muhammad, and on the album, he evokes the names of former leaders Elijah Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan, the latter of which is featured on the intro. Religious faith guides much of Electronica’s words on A Written Testimony. His words feel important, sacred, maybe even guided by the hand of a higher power. Jay Electronica’s bars carry a sense of the divine. Electronica regularly performed his tiny discography live, all the while teasing an album called Act II: Patents of Nobility (The Turn) that never came. But in a rare beautiful way, like some kind of mythical creature who would have a bow and arrow on his back and wings under that bow and arrow.”) Then came mostly silence. (An early example of the myth building around the Electronica name came on the intro to Act 1, with his then partner Erykah Badu declaring, “ He looks kinda like he’s an alien from somewhere, really. His only prior multi-song release was Act I: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge), a 15-minute piece put out in 2007 that features Electronica rapping over a series of drum-less samples taken from the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack. ![]() Unlike those superstars though, only Electronica can claim to have built such anticipation without an album to his name. Jay Electronica’s A Written Testimony can be lined up next to D’Angelo’s Black Messiah, Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy and Dr Dre’s Compton – albums that fans waited over a decade to see come into the light. To enrich your listening, here’s the context you need to know about the man and the music. A Written Testimony is real and it’s here, ending one of hip-hop ’s longest running sagas. That allusion to the Temptation of Christ may or may not be true (it was actually 35 days later that the album dropped), and the planned listening party to launch the record may have been cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak, but Electronica’s announcement proved to not be a false dawn. After teasing fans for a half-generation, 7 th February 2019 finally saw the now 43-year-old take to Twitter to announce that for 40 days and 40 nights he had been in the studio with Jay‑Z – his boss at Roc Nation – and that his album would be with us in 40 days time. The last decade has almost felt like an extended lost weekend for Electronica. Yet you could argue his true exile began after inking a deal with Roc Nation in 2010. Piecing together his life before the age of 30 is the work for a platoon of full-time detectives, music historians and spirit mediums. Plausibly, this could only be the work of invention: the mysterious figure who seemed to wander Earth like a rap game Jules Winnfield or duster-wearing Sergio Leone protagonist. The career of Jay Electronica is smothered in original myth. ![]()
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