REVIEW | JAY ELECTRONICA’S SOLD-OUT SHOW AT THE JAZZ CAFE, LONDON

By SKANDOUZ . • On Reviews

It’s been a few years since Jay Elec­tron­ica last toured the UK.

Now in a slightly smal­ler ven­ue, the world fam­ous Jazz Café on a mel­an­chol­ic Sat­urday night in Janu­ary, the sold-out ven­ue was heav­ing with anti­cip­a­tion for one of Hip Hop’s most élite emcee’s to grace the stage.

An hon­our­able men­tion to the UK’s own Kay Young, an artist we fea­tured in Issue 6 of I am Hip-Hop Magazine, who emo­tion­ally expressed that she was hand selec­ted by Jay Elec­tron­ica (he dis­covered her on Ins­tagram) to open up for him dur­ing his Sold Out four night res­id­ency at the Jazz Café. With a tight trio of musi­cians; Kay Young set the tone with some smooth hyp­not­ic Jazz tinged soul­ful grooves with pos­it­ive pro­gress­ive under­tones. She is cer­tainly an artist to watch out for in the future.

Shortly after 9PM Jay Elec­tron­ica took to the stage with a renewed com­mand­ing energy and some vis­ible new ink on his neck and face.

He was focused, with a mis­sion to deliv­er a flaw­less per­form­ance, enlight­en minds and spread “FACTS”.

Now with an offi­cial album release under his belt some eager mem­bers of the front row were keen to show that they had mem­or­ised every single lyr­ic and played sing-along with Jay, whilst oth­ers who may have been caught up in the qual­ity of his show-steal­ing fea­ture on the recent Kanye West Album DONDA were curi­ous to see what all the hype was about.

Com­ing out to Kanye’s “No Child Left Behind” throw­ing the ROC hand ges­tures and offi­cially kick­ing off with “Exhib­it A” Jay Elec­tron­ica armed only with his DJ and a cord­less Micro­phone in hand, came out and rocked us for an hour and a half straight! Parad­ing back and forth across the stage with no breaks and deliv­er­ing spot­less verse after verse inter­twined with some insight­ful con­text behind some of his clas­sics songs. For example the song “Bet­ter intune with infin­ite” was writ­ten in Lon­don upon hear­ing the death of his Grand­moth­er and recor­ded in a stu­dio in Kentish Town! My jaw hit the floor!! I’m ‘Mr Kentish Town’ to the Hip-Hop world why was I not informed? LOL.

Jay delivered  a spir­itu­ally power­ful and pro­fes­sion­al per­form­ance which kept his audi­ence fully engaged from begin­ning to end.

His break­through single “Exhib­it C” was per­formed in the crowd as tra­di­tion and as if Cov­id nev­er happened, an ele­ment of live per­form­ances we had been miss­ing over the past 2 years.

The audi­ence was sat­is­fied & well fed.

Jay Elec­tron­ica closed the show with a highly emo­tion­al per­form­ance of “A.P.D.T.A.” where he broke down and cried dur­ing the verse he wrote about his mother­’s passing before leav­ing the stage unex­pec­tedly to a thun­der­ous applause. There was no encore.

Wit­ness­ing Jay Elec­tron­ica live is truly a unique Hip Hop exper­i­ence and def­in­itely owns the stage in the same vein as some of the all time greats. If you ever get an oppor­tun­ity to see him live do it!

Mashal­lah

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SKANDOUZ .

Hip Hop Artist / Act­iv­ist / Journ­al­ist / Fun lov­ing indi­vidu­al @SKANDOUZ (On Errr’thang )

About SKANDOUZ .

Hip Hop Artist / Activist / Journalist / Fun loving individual @SKANDOUZ (On Errr’thang )