jai paul

All posts tagged jai paul

Jai Paul Album Update

Posted by Tony on 04/15/2013

So as it turns out, the crazy pre-master, band camp hosted, Jai Paul album is not actually an official release.  There’s a lot of confusion and speculation about what’s happened, and what that means for Jai.

What we know it’s that Jai is trying to distance himself from the release, announcing that the demos were not released by him, and most recently that his laptop had been “stolen”.

Jai Paul Album Update

Jai Paul Album Update

There’s two things we need to take away from these happenings. Number one, the album is really good, especially for a bootleg. Number two, everyone is bullshitting us.

Jai is lying to us – no one “loses” their laptop with their newly complete album on it, all lovingly pre-rendered in low quality MP3.  No cunning thief steals a laptop, notices it’s a (yet to be) famous musician, and fucking sets up a Band Camp using their own bank account.  Lastly, it doesn’t take 48 hours for a major label to remove a bootleg from Band Camp – not a chance!

XL are lying to us – they’re fucking pissed off about an album / mixtape leaking so early – especially when money is changing hands.  They’ve either pissed off Jai to the point where he no longer cares about his deal and is going independent, or this is actually a mixtape that Jai is making money off before releasing his “real” album later in the month on XL.

What I do agree with is that it’s certainly an interesting turn of events, one I couldn’t have begun to predict.  It also means that we’ll more than likely see another, official Jai Paul release quite soon.



Leave a Comment

Jai Paul

Posted by Tony on 11/04/2012

Jai Paul is a bit of a mystery man at the moment, disappearing a little more with each release. After his second demo track “Jasmine” he seems to have utterly evaporated from the scene. No press releases, no promos, no interviews. All this from a man signed to one of the UK’s largest labels XL Recordings.

It seems like a strange situation for someone who’s first track was sampled by some of the biggest artists in the world at the moment – Drake, Pusha-T, Beyonce…

His first release “BTSTU (edit)” is remarkably unusual piece UK funk. Difficult to classify or pidgin hole, BTSTU is a near perfect blending of electro and soul. Imagine Calvin Harris… If he was good or indeed, had any integrity at all. Or perhaps a fairer comparison would be to say he’s a British Frank Ocean, but that’s a statement that compliments neither artist.

BTSTU is short, competent and fresh pop music, even although its more than a year old now. Urban rhythm and blues vocals draped over a fierce but articulate, ever-present bass line. The one unmistakable quality is the sheer amount of promise that’s on show.

BTSTU was then followed by the non release of a track called “Jasmine (demo)”. Available only on his seemingly abandoned MySpace account, Jasmine is a definite nod to Prince’s funk, albeit filtered and processed through the lens of a 2012 mystery producer.

can you hear me jasmine
can you let me in
would you let me over
let me love you
jasmine
it's because I see you
is it cause I knew
she got the jasmine
jasmine

There was talk of an EP about eight months back, but nothing ever surfaced and all mention of which seems to be scrubbed from the web. His début album is still scheduled for 2012, as it yet remains unnamed and as December draws closer and closer, I’d say that it may suffer a similar fate.

Being mysterious and cool is all good when your making music, after all, it frees a listener from the shackles of PR men and allows for a more transparent interpretation of the material. But when you’ve got the world’s attention, you’d better make use of it.

Then again its very possible XL are fucking him with bullshit release schedules and exclusivity deals…

Oh, and for anyone wondering, “BTSTU” stands for “Batistuta”. Now you know.


Leave a Comment