For this year’s Underground Rap Awards, I’m writing in Jaeychino’s name for Rookie of the Year. Sure, there are Kurrco-thirsty caricatures (and genuine talents) that have put up bigger numbers, but across five tapes in 12 months, DC’s monotone auteur has refined his handiwork. In January, Jaeychino’s ARTWORK trilogy opened to pitch blackness with a remix to Nino Paid’s “Pain & Possibilities” somehow more harrowing than the original. Where Nino exorcizes grief in plainspoken spurts, Jaey lets it metastasize and fuel his appetite for reprisal. Since then, his composed drawl has made a home out of sprightly synth flourishes and maudlin vocal chops. ARTWORK II’s “Home Depot,” from June, is the kind of morning commute music that makes your gas pedal feel a little lighter. After August’s 15-track heat check WATCH THE THRONE, Jaeychino has already resurfaced with ARTWORK III, the first opus of his career.
Nearly every track scorches for less than two minutes, each corroding into the next and rarely losing momentum. The operatic detonation of “LIFE 2 REAL” is Jaeychino’s most theatrical work to date: Wailing angels buried under mammoth 808s mourn the lives he eulogizes, his ceaseless flow so urgent you picture the studio crumbling around him. The title track boxes elysian melodies in an echo chamber of drum’n’bass as Jaey uses the cracks in his voice to convey adversity (“Man who gon’ do right for the youngins?”). The track’s only blemish comes in the form of a painfully misguided Trump endorsement. But like the earnest street poets that precede him, Jaeychino weaves assertions of vengeance into a quilt of anguish, illustrating the brutal cycle in which he feels trapped. For every bar in memoriam of a loved one, there’s another around the corner beckoning death.
Jaeychino’s ear for enlivening production offsets what spills from his memory bank. It’s hard to hear his precise deadpan over producer SJR’s caustic beats and not think of classic Lucki; the ghastly haze of “RPS” recalls Watch My Back-era gloom. ARTWORK III propels the comatose wisp of this sound with symphonic polish and post-Opium vitriol. The pindrops of piano that add delicacy to “AND1” and “30” make the calamity of centerpiece “FAKE PS” feel monumental: As metal clangs violently, DMV compatriot ST6 JodyBoof drops in to toss grenades in the street. “I’m ridin’ with Jaey, I know we gon’ blow,” he erupts, “Black truck with ’em shooters, I feel like the pope.” This track’s industrial churn runs through the entire tape, surging into “PR4Y” and the crackling Snow Strippers collab “STURDY.” “TRIS” takes on an incandescent sheen that resembles Tibetan bowl rituals; its warmth emanates like sunrays through a screen door. Rarely across the tape’s half-hour runtime does time feel wasted.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
