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That being said, if I had to throw a party for linguistics majors, A Written Testimony would make it on the playlist.Įven if the album’s concept is in the air, it has a handful of truly unique tracks, among them “The Blinding” with Travis Scott. They usually come from Jay-Z, like when he pours his heart out through the lines “I got numbers in my phone that’ll never ring again / ‘Cause Allah done called ‘em home, so until we sing again.” But these moments are too few and far between to ground the album, and their purpose remain airy and muddled. There are moments of clarity on this record when the song concept is straightforward and empathetic. His infamous wordplay on his stage name from “Exhibit C” spawned a hilarious parody Twitter account that exposed how anything could sound like an Electronica line with complex enough rhymes.

Electronica raps, “But all praise due to Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala / I put on for my nation like I’m King T’Challa / Crushing the oyibo that try to bring wahala.” It’s easy to get lost between the lines when each bar needs its own Google search to be broken down, but “wa ta’ala / King T’Challa / bring wahala” is as gratifying a rhyme scheme as they come.Įlectronica’s lyrical-miracle-spiritual ecstasy can get hazy and convoluted.

Jay Electronica’s bars are as tight on this record as they’ve been since the era of “Exhibit C,” deftly finishing English rhymes with Arabic, Spanish, Jamaican patois, even West African pidgin. As it turns out, neither Jay struggles to keep up. Before listening, I had no idea which rapper would be struggling to keep up with the other. Though his vocals are uncredited, Jay-Z is on almost every track. To the surprise of many, Jay-Z’s steadfast cosign materialized into a close musical collaboration. HotNewHipHop actually wrote a timeline leading up to the release of A Written Testimony that spans over a decade. Billboard asked, “What would it take for you to finally put the project out?” Electronica responded, “An album is something that was created by corporations as a product to make money.” The man’s been in the public consciousness for nearly 13 years, probably rapping in some form for almost twice that time, and - lo and behold - a debut album has arrived. Suddenly, everybody wanted a piece of Jay Electronica: Labels entered a bidding war for him, Jay-Z’s Roc Nation won out and then Electronica spent the next decade as a nutty Twitter grumbler with only leaked songs and loose singles to his name. In 2009, he dropped “Exhibit C,” a not-so-cult classic of sorts that is - over a decade later - still way ahead of our time. He then started dating singer Erykah Badu the eccentricity of her partners after dating her has been the subject of memes in the hip-hop community. He first came up in the mid-2000s with hits on MySpace. New Orleans rapper Jay Electronica is one of the greatest enigmas in the history of hip hop.