The Londoner broadens his palette by summoning the sounds of his adolescence. An artistic transformation that shines with its fluidity and freedom.
When appears Universal Credit (2022), Jeshi’s first album which synthesizes the entire idea we had of his Music at the time – a half-languid, half-insurrectional rap imbued with the socio-political battles of his time – we easily imagined that his successor would beat the same iron, still as incandescent, of English news.
But rather than offering a direct sequel to Universal Credit (named after the equivalent of the RSA in the United Kingdom), the rapper from East London preferred to perform a Trafalgar shot worthy of a Kendrick Lamar publishing Damn (2017) following To Pimp a Butterfly (2015). Namely making an unexpected return to oneself, examining one’s interiority (and the relationship with one’s own music) while his audience was expecting the spiritual heir of a highly political record.
Grime, soul and even pop
This shift bears the title ofAirbag Woke Me Up (literally “the airbag woke me up”) and carries within it the philosophy of Jeshi’s record, that of the transfiguration of a car accident involving the rapper from Newham, as an allegory of awakening, of change, of the necessary metamorphosis in the face of trials and others wake-up calls.
As Jeshi approaches his thirties, it is time for introspection, and Airbag Woke Me Up takes the form of an exercise in dissecting the mechanics of moments of emotional change, of decision-making, in the chaos and fog of war (Alone Tonight, Bad Parts Are My Favourite, Saint or Sinner…). But, at the same time, Jeshi also makes this second album an almost total overhaul of his music.
-More versatile than ever, his voice is changing, continually matching the emotional charge of his texts. The productions directly evoke a euphoric reflection on the music of his childhood and adolescence: UK bass, the grime of the origins (Scumbag sample Dizzee Rascal), English rock or even soul and pop from across the Channel at times. From this double movement, aesthetic and philosophical, the English rapper draws a record of striking formal freedom and transparency. A true artistic awakening.
Airbag Woke Me Up (Because Music). Released January 24. In concert at Trabendo, Paris, February 27.
