London based producer and rapper Jay Prince has just dropped his third and most complete project yet, Smile Good. This follows the two EP’s he released in 2015—Befor Our Time and Beautiful Mercy. Befor Our time was one of my favorite projects coming out of hip-hop last year; filled with funk and rare rhymes Jay Prince quickly became the “on the rise rapper” I told all my friends to start to listen to. Beautiful Mercy, especially considering how much I loved Befor Our Time, was fairly underwhelming. But now I see it was a necessary step for the artist in finding his voice. You can really hear all that Jay has learned in the past year leading up to Smile Good.   

Jay Prince is unique, unlike anything we have in hip-hop right now. He has found a way in Smile Good to blend an old school sound with a new wave Isaiah Rashad-like flow—and in doing so, has created something completely new. If you like funky bass lines, soulful vocals, hard drums, rhodes pianos, spacey synths, and more than anything, just getting down, I highly recommend Smile Good. It’s fitting for almost any situation. In the video below watch Jay Prince make a super dope beat in just 10 minutes in “FACT magazines’” music challenge, “Against The Clock.”

 

Written by Nathaniel Wartzman

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