Track Reviews // Jai Paul - Do You Love Her Now & He


Two singles (XL Recordings, 1st June 2019)

If you know, you know. Anyone with ears to the ground in the myspace years would’ve been held down by the vulnerability, grooviness and visionary beauty of Jai Paul’s music. The soup of inspiration Jai Paul cooks up, from R&B, ambient electronica and bubblegum pop to folk-tinged songs with Hindi film samples and quaking bass gives off a fragrant fog of fumes – a little Prince, Thom Yorke, a dash of Kanye even – all held together by a magpie interest for glistening melodies and digital possibility (take a look at www.jai-paul.com).

The lurching heartthrob of BTSTU, the subdued wild animal under Jasmine, and then the leak in April 2013 that drove the mercurial Londoner out of the online light. Since then there’s been but rustlings, subterranean murmurs and the enigmatic Paul Institute.

These long-awaited tracks are glinting with catharsis – developed from seeds that were being planted in 2013 as Jai Paul readied a major release under Richard Russell’s XL Recordings. They come with a frank letter addressing the leak (which has been released under the defiant title Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones) and with all of this processed it suggests real intent once again in an early sacrifice to the Gods of online hype.

Do You Love Her Now is an evening sky swoon of purples, pinks and blues. The production that drew the Paul brothers comparisons with Dilla and D’Angelo is all there fading up into a minimalist disco groove with percussion so bright and cavernous it could’ve been released on Trojan Records. There are sections where the stumbling bass beat and the winding vocals spiral almost too close to the sun, confirming what Paul himself has said – that these songs are polished gems from the cutting room floor of a few years gone by.

The swelling synths and chicken scratch guitarwork on He further date the original genesis of the songs, but the PC Music bass that smash cuts through at the chorus is a powerful reminder of the 30 year old’s mastery of light and shade. Somewhere in the Random Access Memories funk neon disco amongst the Justin Vernon celestial choirs there still beats the relentlessly inventing heart of potential.

The softened falsetto edges of these songs when compared to Jai Paul’s earlier work are no less skilfully crafted or  but they do lack a little of their danger and bite. He’ll no doubt want to escape the shadow of his storied past (if not the accumulated ability to light up quarters of the blogosphere with ease), but to do that fully he’ll need to show us what Jai Paul next.

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