Pitchfork finally released a review (above) of Jai Paul’s album that leaked over 6 years ago now that it’s actually been officially released and is available to listen to legally. I’m going to drop some of my favorite exerts from the review. with a bit of my own input below.
”When Paul arrived at the start of the decade, he found himself among a vanguard of innovative and ambitious musicians who were opening up a dialog with the major pop establishment. James Blake was stretching Destiny’s Child songs into alien new shapes; Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon was wailing on Kanye records; Rostam Batmanglij was toying with Auto-Tune in Vampire Weekend and Discovery; Frank Ocean was covering Coldplay with startling sincerity. Leading up to the 2013 leak, some of the feverish anticipation surrounding Paul’s official debut album involved the widespread notion that it was high time for him to fully claim his place alongside such peers—and that, if things fell into place, he could very well surpass them all. Then, everything fell apart. “ I couldn’t agree with this paragraph more. So many people have copied off of Jai Paul’s sound. It’s a shame he has never gotten the recognition for the sound he largely invented and this groundbreaking album that leaked 6 years ago.
”….The mind reels when imagining the colossal impact this song could have made if it was given a proper release years ago—the charts it could have climbed, the brains it could have blown, the joy it could have spread. Propelled by samples of Ravi Shankar’s soundtrack for the 1979 Bollywood film Meera, “Str8 Outta Mumbai” is a miracle of cultural synthesis, in which a young British man of Indian descent gloriously expands what pop music can be. At the song’s apex, right when you expect a Prince-ly guitar solo to hit, a Hindi vocal sample erupts instead. I’ve listened to this song hundreds of times across the last six years, and that moment still fills me with awe. It’s the sound of borders breaking, of traditions mingling, of a utopian closeness that so often seems so far away. “
Pitchfork’s rating: 8.9/10
My rating: 10/10
Essential Tracks: Zion Wolf Theme, All Night, Str8 Outta Mumbai, Crush, Jasmine, Vibin’, Desert River, BTSU