A Written Testimony by Jay Electronica — A Review
March 2020 - The long awaited debut album is finally here and delivers on the years of contemplation we expected to hear.
In the second act of 2005’s Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne gets beat up by middle-management gangsters in Gotham City who tell him he might be a tough dude, but doesn’t know struggle, fear or pain. Right after that, he gives up his riches and travels the world without possessions for 7 years, using the time to sharpen his skills and increase his understanding of the underworld. Eventually returning to Gotham as Batman. Jay Electronica built up his mythical ethos in an almost Batman-like way. From homeless on Mesrole Ave, to studying at Shangri La in the Himalayas, to being connected in the wealthiest circles in society. This album sounds like the notes from 20 years’ of those observations scratched into a Moleskine.
When it comes to wielding a pen, Jay Electronica and Jay Z have as much skill as anyone in rap. In A Written Testimony, they team up on most songs to strike with agility and dexterity in a clash of hip-hop heavyweights. Those who appreciate lyricism will be rewarded; even after a dozen spins in a week, there are mines of cleverness left to uncover. Between the two, it might be hard to tell who hides more gems. Some would call Jay Z the world’s single greatest wordsmith, able to reach heights no one else has. I find Jay Z to be the prince of all hip-hop. Who has riches, background, and is deadly on the mic — no one is foolish to argue that the throne isn’t his.
Meanwhile, Jay Electronica is our underdog protagonist. A dozen or so years ago he entered the scene as a common soldier with nothing. Since then, and without even an album, he’s stumbled up the ranks with New Orleans charisma and talent that couldn’t be suppressed. He built his legend walking shoeless around the world. Gaining knowledge of the underground and learning from the major spiritual traditions. As a result, the debut studio album is dense and heavy like scripture. It’s not a collection to play on repeat as much as an album to revisit with daily meditation.
A Written Testimony finds ever-evolving Jay Z at his most malleable. With the constant presence of Jay Z on almost every track, it’s temping to call Jay and Jay a duo. Like they are a hip-hop super group. Thinking of The Fugees or Black Star, but a closer comparison is 2011’s Watch the Throne where Jay Z similarly shows off his bars while taking a step back to Kanye’s creative vision for the album.
Whereas Watch the Throne felt like two god-level talents at their heights who couldn’t quite seamlessly mesh, a rap version of the 2004 Kobe-Shaq Lakers. A Written Testimony feels like the 2020 Lakers-team where Lebron James and Anthony Davis exist is harmony — They like each other and you can sense the chemistry is working. This works because Jay Z and other supporting players do a great job to reflect the same themes and ideas that Jay Electronica is trying to present.
But maybe because of that, it’s easy to feel like Jay Z is a wave rider, with his newfound appreciation of burning sage, Arabic language, and radical economic ideology. When he shouts out JoAnne Chesimard, better known as Assata Shakur, I can’t help but think she would recoil at her being offhand referenced by a hip hop billionaire. She was one of the leading black socialist revolutionaries of her time, taken down by COINTELPRO and has been in political asylum in Cuba since 1984. This is the same Jay Z who partnered with the NFL to effectively give them cover for colluding against Colin Kaepernick. But like Jay Z boasts on track 7, Flux Capacitor, he’s actually got more money than NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell. Jay Z does his own thing; he doesn’t need the NFL, Jay Electronica or anything else.
Maybe the most consistently referenced presence on the album is Islam. And bars like, “My heart chakra light up when I make Sajdah at Fajr,” sit in a spiritual liminal space, blurring Islamic ideological lines, and perhaps mental ones. He lays out imagery of the heart chakra energy center from Hinduism and sets a scene from the daily Morning Prayer in Islam (Sajdah at Fajr). Jay Elec isn’t a prophet but he uses his platform to further the discourse of geo-religious and political realities, with imagination to comprehend what those differences could mean.
“A.P.I.D.T.A.” (All Praise Is Due to Allah) is the final track on A Written Testimony. It’s genre bending with a serenely smooth beat that samples from Khruangbin, a Thai-Style rock band. The song has both Jay Elec and Jay Z contemplating mortality and what it means to lose someone you love. It’s an appropriate if bittersweet closing for an album that covers so much spiritual, historical and emotional ground.
We never knew if this album would come out until it did. Jay Electronica was, and remains, an enigma whose journey to this moment was an Odyssey. So when he came home and delivered his album, it was a surprise. He’s always focused on connecting with people and bringing the metaphysical to the literal realm. The album is here and he has.
Rating: 9/10
