If there still is such a thing as the American Dream, it feels like the type that immediately dissolves as soon as you wake up. The shit your parents may have been promised in their youth—whether they were born here, were forced to come here, or arrived on their own volition—was probably promised to you, too. Go to school, get a job, buy a house, that sort of thing. But anyone too young to recall where they were when the Towers fell could tell you that pathway is all but obsolete. Where true optimism may have once been abundant, it now comes in small, ephemeral doses. Sometimes, optimism comes in the form of distraction. At this very moment, it sounds like Jaeychino.
I keep coming back to “DRUGS AIN NUN,” a charming loosie released ahead of the D.C. rapper’s electric new full-length, IF YOU KNEW. In the video, backed by champagne synths and hopscotching snares, a tuxedoed Jaeychino strolls the beach in Margiela sneakers, his jacket flapping in the wind as seafoam washes ashore. With a boxy aspect ratio and grainy finish, it’s so aesthetically YMCMB that I feel the hope of my preteen self bubbling up my chest. There’s this prevailing sentiment of perseverance in spite of grief, and a compulsion to dedicate his success to those who witnessed the journey. How I imagine millennials felt about Meek Mill’s first wave of motivational rap is how I feel now; every invocation of violence is buoyed by the pursuit of a life away from it.
“DRUGS AIN NUN” and the entirety of IF YOU KNEW position Jaeychino at the edge of his crabs-in-a-bucket DMV beginnings, so close to real wealth that his knuckles are white from popping bottles at the pregame. He’s as callous and reflective as he’s ever been, balancing his knack for provocation with a desire to mature and inspire. Abundant are the invitations of death and the surprise visits that follow, the firearms and fabrics pressed against skin, the clarity of sobriety and the joy of indulgence, all packaged in a way that feels like reaching the mountaintop.
It’s really the undercurrent of hope that sticks with me. “I’m so, so proud of you,” Chino’s little cousin says over the tearjerking piano of “AKEELAH.” “Like look at you, still standing, still grinding… Can’t nobody take that from you!” So much of Jaeychino’s ethos is informed by the improbability of beating the odds, the sentimentality that comes with that, and the ability to flex on niggas when your tears dry up. Often, on tracks like “AKEELAH,” it makes for a beautiful, challenging, heartrending contradiction: Just as quickly as he commends himself for being “the man he became,” he boasts about the murders his homie can claim. It seems morality for him is a spectrum, with vengeance on one side and altruism on the other. “Believe in yoself, man you gotta do right,” he raps on “DID IT FOR YALL.” The intro track, a tribute to his daughter who passed during childbirth, is full of “long live”s, luxury embraces, and trenchbaby vignettes. He peels off in Ferraris and thinks of those back home who could never afford one; he dances with neighborhood junkies and offers a friend a couple racks to stop taking pills. Who is he if not the breadth of where he came from?
“Don’t idolize me,” Jaeychino implores as 808s and crystalline melodies form a colossal, translunary union. “Made a name for myself, I’m the man in my building/Man, the opps ain't nun’, they keep killing children.” For all the emotional weight IF YOU KNEW carries, its urgency is supplemented by pictorial executive production from Atlanta’s Glasear and Sweden’s Woesum, two beatsmiths who, between them, have worked with everyone from Drain Gang and Opium, to PinkPantheress and Bassvictim. The sound is a distilled mix between DMV crank (they even got Cheecho on here), 2010s pop rap, and icy, Eurocentric cloud rap. From the gothic EDM of “KIDS IN NORTHWEST,” to the shonen protagonist music of “FOR MY DAUGHTER,” to the bleary, near-ambience of “JAMAICA,” IF YOU KNEW is colorful and expansive. Song structures feel even more dynamic now, marked not only by SJR’s signature pitch shifts, but also by instrumental bridges and AutoTuned harmonies. Shades of SALEM, Drake, LUCKI, Ye, and Yung Lean all blend in to make one sleek, iridescent bricolage.
As Jaeychino slips into the new clothes that come with celebrity, he finds new ways to evolve his iteration of the DMV flow. His approach is slow and measured on “BRICKELL” and “F**K A ENTOURAGE,” but he’s frenzied and impassioned on “FOR MY DAUGHTER,” rapping fast enough to make you dizzy tryna keep up with him. On the xavier-inspired “SECRET,” he adopts Dragnutz’s flow and disses Rolling Loud for snubbing him. The personal flourishes that sink in as his punch-ins breeze past make the music feel full: The kinship he finds with the zoes and scammers in Miami, the joy he gets from sliding to go-go concerts with his mom. At 24 songs, IF YOU KNEW can feel a bit laborious, though. Jaeychino is much more effective when he speaks plainly and directly from the heart instead of leaning into punchlines and literary devices. Shit like “If I ever get cloned, just call me Tyrone,” sounds goofier than it was probably meant to; other lines like “Come through with a wig like Bruce Jenner” are just goofy.
Regardless, the lasting impression of IF YOU KNEW is a celebratory one. Near the album’s close, on “DID IT FOR YALL,” you hear emotional fans professing their love for Jaey, close to tears. “You the fuckin GOAT, you did it, bro!” one of them says; the victory lap feels earned. Hearing Jaeychino reflect on his upbringing—the bonds built, the blood-stained blocks, the checks that didn’t clear—is to come face to face with its complexity and contradictory sense of justice. “I’m promoting the violence, but a nigga the hope,” he raps on “TMZ,” self-aware enough to tell it like it is.
