For this 12 months’s Underground Rap Awards, I’m writing in Jaeychino’s identify for Rookie of the Yr. Positive, there are Kurrco-thirsty caricatures (and real abilities) which have put up greater numbers, however throughout 5 tapes in 12 months, DC’s monotone auteur has refined his handiwork. In January, Jaeychino’s ARTWORK trilogy opened to pitch blackness with a remix to Nino Paid’s “Ache & Prospects” someway extra harrowing than the unique. The place Nino exorcizes grief in plainspoken spurts, Jaey lets it metastasize and gas his urge for food for reprisal. Since then, his composed drawl has made a house out of sprightly synth thrives and maudlin vocal chops. ARTWORK II’s “Dwelling Depot,” from June, is the sort of morning commute music that makes your fuel pedal really feel somewhat lighter. After August’s 15-track warmth verify WATCH THE THRONE, Jaeychino has already resurfaced with ARTWORK III, the primary opus of his profession.
Practically each observe scorches for lower than two minutes, every corroding into the subsequent and infrequently dropping momentum. The operatic detonation of “LIFE 2 REAL” is Jaeychino’s most theatrical work so far: Wailing angels buried beneath mammoth 808s mourn the lives he eulogizes, his ceaseless move so pressing you image the studio crumbling round him. The title observe bins elysian melodies in an echo chamber of drum’n’bass as Jaey makes use of the cracks in his voice to convey adversity (“Man who gon’ do proper for the youngins?”). The observe’s solely blemish comes within the type of a painfully misguided Trump endorsement. However just like the earnest road poets that precede him, Jaeychino weaves assertions of vengeance right into a quilt of anguish, illustrating the brutal cycle through which he feels trapped. For each bar in memoriam of a liked one, there’s one other across the nook beckoning dying.
Jaeychino’s ear for enlivening manufacturing offsets what spills from his reminiscence financial institution. It’s exhausting to listen to his exact deadpan over producer SJR’s caustic beats and never suppose of basic Lucki; the ghastly haze of “RPS” remembers Watch My Again-era gloom. ARTWORK III propels the comatose wisp of this sound with symphonic polish and post-Opium vitriol. The pindrops of piano that add delicacy to “AND1” and “30” make the calamity of centerpiece “FAKE PS” really feel monumental: As steel clangs violently, DMV compatriot ST6 JodyBoof drops in to toss grenades on the street. “I’m ridin’ with Jaey, I do know we gon’ blow,” he erupts, “Black truck with ’em shooters, I really feel just like the pope.” This observe’s industrial churn runs by all the tape, surging into “PR4Y” and the crackling Snow Strippers collab “STURDY.” “TRIS” takes on an incandescent sheen that resembles Tibetan bowl rituals; its heat emanates like sunrays by a display door. Hardly ever throughout the tape’s half-hour runtime does time really feel wasted.
