Keep Troopin' In a Place Called Four Wing Island

This was well-timed.  I've been in the mood for something new... not just in the basic sense of a song I haven't heard before, but some really new Hip-Hop.  You know, it's an easy trap to fall into when you're a little bit older where you just listen to old school Hip-Hop in your comfort zone.  And then you just listen to the biggest, dumbest pop rap song "the kids are listening to" and immediately recoil saying, okay, nothing but TDS Mob for another four years!  So I looking for a little shake-up, and as fortune would have it, this one found me.  Four Wing Island by an independent London MC named Joejas.  I mean, just look at that cover.  If this one doesn't fit the bill, nothing will.

In a sense, this feels like UK equivalent of Odd Future, scrappy, young and entirely self-made.  "All music," we're told, has been "written, recorded and produced by JoeJas."  The artwork and everything's all done by him, too.  There are no guests except for a single other voice that pops in to back him up on a couple hooks.  But where Tyler and co. came out dark, bordering on horrorcore, Joejas comes out as light (or at least un-sinister) and defiantly childlike as his artwork suggests: "just another nigga to these cops, aight, with my limbs stretchin' out my drop-top tike.  No license, registration, parents tryna pull me out said 'it's only meant for kids to play in'!  Said fuck that then I got weighed in, woke up later and my brain moved places.  Already got a mortgage and a lame whip.  God damn, bro!"

His singles (at least the ones I checked out on Youtube) are all pretty strong, though the album as a whole drifts into some weirder, more conceptual areas.  You know, like Kwamé's second album, except that album lost control to a series skits that were meant to create an over-arching narrative about a hard day at Polka Dot School or whatever.  Four Wing Island doesn't have any skits, but it tends to get lost in over-repeated hooks and esoteric references.  Like, for an obvious example, what the heck is "Four Wing Island?"  The title track tells us repeatedly that it's a place where he feels safe, and the liner notes hint that the island is a kind of reference to how each song has a distinct (isolated) tone.  But I'm not sure we're meant to have any idea where the Four Wing name comes from or what it might mean.  Like a Greenthink record, we're just left to guess at a lot of the insular references.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but you should be forewarned going in, because they're the sort of unsolvable poetic mysteries that will frustrate as many listeners as they might intrigue and delight.

But don't get the wrong idea.  It's not as hopelessly artsy-fartsy[to use a technical term] as I may be making it sound.  Don't look for any familiar samples to latch onto, but there's a lot of emphasis on creating relatable moods (one track is a essentially a piano solo over a Hip-Hop beat), talking about just drifting around on his bike, eating alone feeling heartbroken or "stay bumfy reading comics in my undies."  "4wingkilla!" is just a fun opportunity to go hard over an aggressive beat, "even in these bright ass clothes I'm still seen as a threat... make me wanna wile out Mortal Kombat 'finish him,' uppercut rip a shin, adrenaline kickin' in."  That's a pretty tight flow there, and the lyrics are consistently well written throughout, no matter the subject.

So this is the first I've heard, but it's actually Joejas's third album.  It's out on CD in an attractive digipack with a full-color booklet of lyrics from his website.  And, as of this writing, his previous two CDs (Planet and Gappy) are still available, too.  Of course it's all streaming everywhere, too, like all music is nowadays, which is probably good, because I'm sure you'll want to try before you buy.  But I'm very glad to see there's a solid physical release for those who decide to get on board.  This reminds me of the Atak days, with a catalog full of mystifying scrappy young idealists releasing tape after tape, pushing the envelope and being just a little too "out there" for the undaring.  Just what the doctor ordered.