Jay Electronica – Act II: Patents of Nobility (The Turn)
Genre: Hip Hop
Score: 4/10
I’ve waited 10 entire years to hear this album. I never thought I’d ever see the day that Act II: Patents of Nobility ever reached the public’s ears.
These past 12 years of following Jay Electronica were wild. His debut tape Style Wars blew up on Myspace in 2008. The earth-shattering response of Act I: Eternal Sunshine and Exhibits A & C basically turned him into a rap legend. His epic Rock Nation Announcement was then followed by a self-imposed ten year long full length oath of silence, only to be broken because his boss told him he had 40 days and 40 nights to physically manifest an album onto streaming platforms.
Here we are, ten years of sporadic features and a debut album with his mans later, the Jay Electronica Stans just couldn’t take it anymore. They needed Act II and they needed it today. So, they offered $9k for the tracks off of the tracklist that Jay released years prior, regardless of how they sound or of any preconditions regarding the quality of the record. The album was sold for only $9k, only for it to be subsequently leaked to the general public. The Stans finally got what they wanted.Overall: I originally thought this was only a leak and that it wouldn’t represent what Jay Electronica wanted to communicate through his project. Now that it’s an official Roc Nation release, I guess this is the record that he has now wanted to present to the world. Act II is really here, and now that I’ve finally been able to listen to it as it’s supposed to be, it’s not very good. But, that’s not to say there aren’t highlights and great bars on this record, which at this point is all fans are even asking for. But these songs are clearly crumbs that Jay Electronica left for the birds. The mix is also hot garbage.
Play by Play:
1. Real Magic – Ronald Reagan sample opens the record up. Those stock children chorus hits bothered me a lot on a Written Testimony, and they sound even sillier on here. Thankfully, Jay sounds grateful, calm and reflective on where he’s at. His bars are really observant and the themes are as spiritual as ever. The Dream hums nicely over the outro. He’s so underrated as a singer.
2. New Illuminati (Sans Kanye’s Verse) – The mix sucks. However, the sounds like a Madlib loop. I could definitely hear Kanye rapping over this as well. Jay’s bars are as lyrical miracle as ever (“we the new illuminati, fuck Bill O’Riley and Rudy Giuliani”), though his double entendres in his verses are pretty clever and the wordplay is really skillful.
3. Patents of Nobility – It sounded like he hit up Madlib for a few loops to use for the sampler. I really hate that stock children chorus sound.
4. Life on Mars – LaTonya Givens’s feature sounds great on the track. I like Jay Electronica’s flow and the beat. It sounds like a Chance the Rapper cut but with Jay Electronica over it instead, which works perfectly fine. No doubt, Chance is definitely influenced by Jay Electronica.
5. Bonny & Clyde – Jay kills this track. Memories of Rush Hour flash as I hear the instrumental. The choice of samples and instrumentals to me make sense, given Jay Elect’s taste in dusty samples. He’s known to be a very spiritual law of attraction believing type of guy. Overall the song sounds like a cut off of Act I: Eternal Sunshine. This is definitely a highlight for me.
6. Dinner at Tiffany’s – Am I listening to a Jay Electronica album or the Frozen soundtrack? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a pretty song with some sweet performances. But if this was supposed to be on the official tracklist, I don’t really see how it fits sonically.
7. Shiny Suit Theory – This was a cut officially released already on A Written Testimony, but in the context of this tracklist, it’s definitely one of the better cuts. Both Jay and Hov body the beat with ease. Thematically it also ties into the rest of the album pretty well.
8. Memories & Merlot – Lyrics are pretty reflective, as they keep being with Jay. I think he’s talking about a past relationship. I like the piano and the sad tone of the song.
9. Better in Tune – I enjoy the sampled clips, but I’m not sure if they reinforce what Jay Electronica is trying to say on the record. My biggest issue with Jay in the past is that he spends a lot of his song thinking and observing what’s going on in the world, but doesn’t really comes to any significant conclusions in his songs. He’s always emphasizing that he’s at a higher level of consciousness and his level of insight requires a degree of self-awareness that most people don’t appear to have, but he doesn’t actually take steps to help his fans reach that level of understanding he claims he’s on. Plus the song itself is not strong. Although those vocal lines LaTonya Givens sang at the end are pretty sweet.
10. Letter to Falon – This song is awful. What is going here? He sings like a robot being smothered with a pillow. I get that he’s trying to catch an eerie vibe with the minimal beat, but it just comes off as goofy and incoherent. His bars are inspiring, I guess. Apparently, this song was already released as a loose single back in 2017 and I’m not sure why it ever was, to be completely honest.
11. Road to Perdition – This sounds like a classic Just Blaze beat. Jay and Hov both sound hungry on this. Jay Electronica goes in with his trademark hotep bars while Hov hypes him up. Though I die a little inside everytime I hear that wack kids chorus sound, lyrically, he kills it. Almost every bar is clever and witty. Definitely the best song on the album, despite it being released earlier.
12. Welcome to Knightsbridge – It’s at this point that my frustration with Jay Electronica and his music clicks with me. He just comes off as a hotep. From the Elijah Muhammad sample, the eerie afrofuturist droning synths, the hyperconscious lyrics, right down to the ashy mix, he embodies the Hotep MC typecast: The Pan Africanist, conscious stereotype who represents the logical conclusion to all of hip hop’s most afrocentric forefathers (The Native Tongue Posse, MF DOOM, Wu Tang, Digable Planets, etc). However, unlike those artists, he wasn’t dropping music frequently enough to justify these so called higher level streams of consciousness, in my opinion. As a result, I feel that extra meaning is often put into Jay’s bars by his most passionate fans, who may feel that he has this very large message to send to the world, but in reality his references to religion and spirituality fail to communicate anything beyond his ability to tie religious references into his bars.
13. Rough Love – I heard those drums before, but I can’t remember where they came from. The mix also sucks on this cut. Jay sounds like he’s stuck in a mirror-house and can’t get out. His flow is also clumsy on this. The hook is pretty laughable too. No wonder he didn’t want this out.
14. Night of the Roundtable (sans the Kanye verse) – I like the Jay Z interview clip, despite how crummy the mix sounds. To be honest, the recording of this is so rough that it’s totally unlistenable to me. However, I can see Kanye riding over this beat with pride. Sad that his verses never made it on the record.
15. Run and Hide – There is definitely a lot of Dilla and Madlib worship on this beat. The Bullitts sings pretty well on this. He’s like a smokier Isaac Hayes. Jay has a decent verse, but through the course of this album, I found myself tuning out. The themes of transcending and religion and spirituality and self-awareness haven’t been explored in a new or refreshing way to me at this point. Also, the recording speed sounds like it’s warping, which I’m not sure was supposed to be intentional.
16. 10k Lotus Petals – Because “10k Years of Darkness” was already taken, I guess. Still, it’s a pretty instrumental outro. It reinforces the air of pretension the record has built pretty well.
Score: 4/10
Favorite Track in Bold
Just my opinion