After literally decades (his only mixtape, Act I: Eternal Sunshine, was released in 2007), Jay Electronica has released his debut album at the age of 43. A Written Testimony has been a long time coming and my goodness it does not let up.
The first proper track on the album, Ghost of Soulja Slim, makes it clear that the time to make this album as perfect as possible wasn’t in vain. What makes this opener even more astounding and confounding is that the very first verse actually comes from a slightly different Jay, this one being Z, and not Electronica. The sampling could not be more in-debt to classic hip hop standards but the drums blast in like an avalanche. The rhyming, the layers, the sound production, it all is of the highest order. After all these decades, we can rest easy knowing it was all worth it.
