Jay Electronica Drops Third New Project in Less Than 5 Days

After going five years without releasing a new project, Jay Electronica has just released three of them.

On Sunday, just two days after he unloaded his surprise projects, A Written Testimony: Leaflets, and A Written Testimony: Power at the Rate of My Dreams, the New Orleans rapper released a follow-up called A Written Testimony: Mars, An Inhabited Planet. Checking in at eight tracks, the project, like the first two new releases, appears to be a continuation of his 2020 major label debut album, A Written Testimony. This one features @FalElectronica and PYT Joyce. Of course, it also includes more of Jay Electronica’s singular poetics.

With its ambient soundscape and Jay Elect’s metaphysical poetry, “Letter to Mars” lives up to its name. Engulfed in nocturnal space, the 49-year-old sounds like a monk rapping from a void: “My skin clothed in sin, like Jesus out of the womb / It took years, months, and days for this wildflower to bloom / My cocoon was a mix of light and dark like either side of the moon / 40 days and 40 nights like Mūsā and Hārūn.” 

While the project does feature new Jay Electronica bars, more than half of it is composed of interludes carried by other voices. That said, the whole experience feels uniquely Electronica; layered in mystique and subtle elegance. His two earlier new projects featured appearances from DRAM, Quentin Miller, Westside Gunn and Hit-Boy.

So, yeah. It was a good week to be a Jay Electronica fan. Before the new projects hit shelves, he blessed friends with increased access to old ones, releasing his late 2000s projects ACT I: Eternal Sunshine (the pledge) EP and his ACT II: The Patents of Nobility (the turn) onto all major DSPs.