Today (Jan. 3), the line up for the 2018 Governor’s Ball Music Festival was revealed with Eminem, Jack White, Travis Scott and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs set as headliners. Current rap sensations Post Malone, Lil Uzi Vert, 2 Chains, and Vic Mensa along with r&b rising star Khalid join the jocular lineup.
For hip-hop enthusiasts, there is one act that stood out the most from the 65 artist line up, causing many to take double, or triple takes at the festival’s signature post, Jay Electronica.
Ever since the release of his only official project to date, his widely acclaimed 2007 mixtape, Act I: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge), Electronica has kept fans in deep suspense for the release of his debut album. The oracular Roc Nation emcee has spent the past 11 years, teasing fans, about the release of his first album, but has chosen to keep the project’s release, a mystery. The drag-along is so severe, some fans say they have given up waiting for new Jay, being all of his promises for the release of his studio album, Act II: Patents of Nobility (The Turn) have fallen short.
Erykah Badu, whom he has a soon to be 9-year-old daughter with talked about the possibility of a Jay Electronica album in a 2015 interview with The Breakfast Club saying, “He can make one if he wants to but he don’t need to do that.”
On the hip-hop tip, the most recent account of a Jay Electronica lyrical hysteria was in November of last year, on Talib Kweli‘s album Radio Silence for the track “All of Us,” triggering a serious tease with bars like, “In a Worldstar society where all we do is look and watch…No intervention, policemen beating elderly women with evil…” He also joined forces with super villain emcee MF Doom last August for “True Lightyears,” from Doom’s Adult Swim album Missing Book of Rhymes.
Prior to the Doom collab, he also exclusively dropped a self-produced single on TIDAL titled, “Letter to Falon,” which also involves the production smarts of The Bullitts, and Paul Epworth.
Electronica has not necessarily fallen off of the face of the planet. That would be impossible. Especially due to the hype of Eternal Sunshine, which alone, has placed him in many hip-hop head 10 top lists. He managed to collaborate with Kendrick Lamar and Big Sean back in 2013 for the track “Control,” and scored a collab with fellow class emcees Talib Kweli, J. Cole, Yasiin Bey (Mos Def), for the Hi-Tek produced, “Just Begun.”
Jay Electronica’s resurgence to the stage is a huge sign that hip-hop might finally get the Jay Electronica album fans have been begging for him over the past eleven years. Until, Governor’s Ball, hip-hop heads are keeping their eyes very close on Electronica. He is on the radar.
