The last time Jay Electronica released a full-length project: the first iPhone just hit the scene, “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” wasn’t even six months old, people were waiting on the last Harry Potter book, Spotify hadn’t launched in the U.S., Drake was still on Degrassi, “Chocolate Rain” was the meme of the moment, Bon Jovi had the number one album in the country, Rihanna and Jay-Z had the number one song, SoundCloud wasn’t a thing yet, neither was Instagram, Clipse were still a group, the movie world was introduced to a CGI rat that wanted so desperately to be a chef, Keeping Up With The Kardashians hadn’t premiered their first episode, Jeezy had yet to inform the world that his president was black and his Maybach was blue, because his president was not yet black and it’s unclear what color his Maybach was in 2007.
After 13 years of transcendent singles (“Exhibit C”) and strange detours over Soulja Boy beats popularized by Drake (“We Made It”), Jay Electronica returned to Twitter to announce that he’s ready to release his debut album. “Album done. Recorded over 40 days and 40 nights, starting from Dec 26,” he wrote in a series of tweets. “Releasing in 40 days. A Written Testimony.” Jay-Z’s engineer Young Guru quote tweeted Electronica, ensuring the public “This is not a drill,” Just Blaze added, “Are you watching closely,” and Jay-Z liked the mini-tweet storm (the only tweets he has currently “liked”).
https://twitter.com/JayElectronica/status/1225645641268785155
Now there’s a lot of eye rolls, sighs, and general reluctance to believe Electronica’s word. The rapper isn’t the most trustworthy person when it comes to updates about his music, but here’s the thing: If you were signed by Jay-Z off the strength of one song and allegedly got close to Rothschild money, would you want to go through the effort of releasing a full-length rap album?
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
