Written Testimony, the first studio album to be released by Jay Electronica (the stage name of Timothy Thedford), is, according to Armin Rosen, “one of the most anticipated releases of the year.” While Rosen finds himself impressed by Electronica’s artistry, something else becomes apparent in the first minute of the first song, when the listener hears a recording of Louis Farrakhan lecturing about the inauthenticity of the Jewish people. And it isn’t just the first song. This notorious anti-Semite’s worldview saturates the entire album:
Any doubt as to whether Electronica is just toying with Nation of Islam rhetoric for edginess’s sake is dispelled on the [second] track, “Ghost of Soulja Slim,” [which likewise samples one of Farrakhan’s speeches].
Electronica delivers his first verse, along with the rest of the album, in a voice-of-God baritone, every syllable pronounced with purpose and total clarity. “I came to bang with the scholars/ And I bet you a Rothschild I get a bang for my dollar,” he intones. Perhaps this is an innocent reference to a reported tryst with a Rothschild heiress whose marriage Jay is alleged to have helped break up in 2012, but other lines in the [the rapper’s work] show that he views the affair as having some higher significance. From 2016’s “The Curse of Mayweather”: . . . “they told me that the Rothschilds rule the world/ So I went over to England like a black god and got me one.”
Here on “Soulja Slim,” that psychosexual fascination with the Jews is slyly glanced at without being named. “The Synagogue of Satan wants to hang me by my collar,” Jay raps in the very next line after the Rothschild name check. Only the very obtuse could miss the reference in that one: in a 2018 speech, Farrakhan asked his followers, “I wonder, will you recognize Satan? I wonder if you will see the satanic Jew and the synagogue of Satan?”
Perhaps these, and other derogatory references to Jews, are not surprising for a rapper who has been a member of Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam for most of his adult life. More disturbing, writes Rosen, is that the album was produced by the hip-hop elder statesman Jay-Z—and that critics will either ignore or excuse Electronica’s bigotry:
[R]eviewers are already downplaying [the album’s Nation of Islam propaganda] or hearing only what is most convenient for them to hear. And we, in turn, are under no obligation to tolerate Jay Electronica, whatever virtues his debut album might have. The blame shouldn’t be [his] alone, though. At least on paper, boosting Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam not long after an unprecedented and inevitably deadly string of attacks on Jews centered in Jay-Z’s native Brooklyn should be a legacy-defining lapse for the mogul, something that would require substantial apology and reflection in order to rectify. But neither Jay is likely to be called to account.
Read more on Tablet: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/jay-electronica