Jay Prince - Wonder: Review

Last week saw the release of Wonder, the latest project from Jay Prince. Both of us at AVSJ are big fans of the multi talented rapper and producer, watching and listening to his career grow and evolve since his 2015 EP Befor Our Time, which featured his breakthrough song Polaroids. Since that EP there have been four more, each expressing a sound unique to Jay whilst he continually develops new musical ideas and themes. I have personally seen him perform at least three times, all at different stages of his career, and his live shows emphasise his aim to perfect his craft, from whipping out the electric guitar or playing his synthesiser keyboard, to mashing up his own songs in Cruisin and Mandem. Each EP features a guest slot from a critically acclaimed vocalist, such as SiR, Mahalia, and Aminé, to name a few, often produced by Jay himself, fitting seamlessly alongside some of the best in the current Hip-Hop and R&B world. What makes Jay Prince unique is that his style seems more in tune with those across the Atlantic, when he is actually an East Londoner. UK rap is so often thought to revolve around Grime and Afrobeat, but here is a man setting himself apart to create what truly resonates with him and, to me, is a breath of fresh air in a smog of averageness that is the UK rap scene.

Jay Prince clearly has an American influence, exhibited by his work with the aforementioned musicians and his features on Soulection Radio, and this is emphasised in Wonder. The lead single Beamlight, which was released with a brilliant black and white video depicting meteors reigning over Newham, was produced by the fantastic American beat-makers Savon and Sango that connects with Trap more than a lot of Jay’s past work, highlighted by the simplistic but catchy chorus consisting of just nine words. This is culminated in the closing track Blessed Now, which is filled with triplet hi-hats, triplet flows, and sirens. It is definitely something that we have seen in his earlier work, but Wonder’s timbre focuses much more on this sub-genre and does so effectively.

However, in Beamlight, Jay sandwiches simplicity within fantastic, thought-provoking flows in his verses that depict his concerns regarding happiness and trust surrounding those around him that arise from his attempts at becoming a star. The anxieties of ‘making it’ are a prominent theme throughout the EP, seen in every song in some form or another, with lines such as ‘They wanna see you down, they don't wanna see you clear’ and ‘Fuck a good day I’m happier when I’m sad’. Yet these acknowledgements of self-deprecation strike more like acceptance, reminiscent of Mac Miller’s last album Swimming; Whilst Mac declared ‘I was drowning, but now I’m swimming’, Jay’s chorus on the title-track song Wonder provides a similar message in ‘I've been holding me down for a minute, like don't let me down, don't let me drown’. This project is less of an EP and more a platform for a young man to express his vulnerabilities in the best way he knows how, getting the issues that play on his mind off of his chest. It perhaps seems odd that he uses Trap beats on many of his songs to do this, but this is a style he has been building on for a couple years now and it works very well on this EP.

Before Wonder was released, I had already bought tickets for Jay Prince’s show at the intimate Green Door Store in Brighton. Upon listening to his newest project, I am even more excited for what I was sure to be an excellent show already. Every song on the album has exceptional production, fantastic flows with meaning behind the words, and are crowd-pleasers to make his live show hit that much harder. My worry is the potential neglecting of his previous work as this is branded as the Wonder tour, but even if that were the case there is so much quality material in this project that it will be difficult for him to put on a poor performance. Whilst this probably is not my favourite of his EPs, Wonder does a lot of things right and is another success in a large catalogue of hit projects.

Favourite song: Wonder

7/10