Brooklyn’s East New York neighborhood, like so many neighborhoods in the city, was once ravaged by the crack epidemic. As dealers supplied junkies and prompted violent crime, a community long crippled by poverty, negligence, and disenfranchisement became a forgotten public housing cesspool. As recently as 2011, the neighborhood had the highest murder rate in New York City. These surroundings raised Jimi Tents and sharpened his critical eye.
Now, the poor Brooklyn neighborhood has become the darling of city officials and private investors, a pearl to be pried from a clam shell of minority indigence. Earlier this year, East New York was deemed the “hottest new neighborhood” in the city, inspired by rezoning and speculation. Dubbed “gentrification’s last frontier” by Curbed, the old East New York is vanishing. However it may change, this is Jimi Tents’ home, and he’s constantly wrestling with what exactly that means to him, for the neighbors being pushed out, and for the invaders doing the pushing.
It’s nearly impossible to listen to I Can’t Go Home without thinking about the transition of East New York. Gentrification and reclamation are big forces in his world, and Tents is the mouthpiece for local dreamers. There’s a certain stress charging each bar, producing high-powered raps that flex in and out of breaths. The strain of bearing the hope of others, and carrying a place with you wherever you go can be taxing, but it can be inspiring, too. In 2015, gentrification hit Jimi close to home when his childhood residence faced foreclosure. The album’s title can be read as a relation of this painful truth, but the lyrics suggest otherwise: within brews a homegrown resilience, as a prodigy refuses to return from his rap quest empty handed.
Jimi writes carefully-worded stories, unpacking where his pursuit of fame has taken him. Upward mobility often means dislocation for the people below, and as he evaluates his own hunger for affluence, he mourns those being displaced by WASPs with similar ambitions. On the skittering dash “Right Now (I Wanna Interlude),” Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock’s “I wanna rock right now” goes from casual profession of skill to exasperated imperative. Sometimes he raps like he’s pursuing entry into an imaginary hall of fame, sometimes he raps like he has no choice. The dichotomy produces breathtaking displays of timing and finesse.
When Jimi Tents broke through with his 5 O’Clock Shadow EP, he came off as a proud New Yorker who refused to shackle himself to the plagues of the city’s contemporary rap scene. Many of those conversations were internal and without geotags, more universal ruminations on police brutality and depression. Each song on I Can’t Go Home spirals outward from Brooklyn, considering his brief career arc in the bigger picture and placing it in context. The album’s most powerful moments, confessionals like “Should’ve Called, Pt. 2” and “Below the Surface” with Saba, pulse with life as Jimi explores his city, his relationships with the people in it, and how they shape his outlook.
On the surface of opener “NY vs. LA,” the track merely balances local promise against bicoastal aspirations. But in the fringes, Jimi can’t help but think about how his actions affect the folks back home, and subsequently, just how much of the process is in his control. Intricate ideas are broken down into their simplest components. On “No Looking Back (Glance),” he raps, “Left my hood with no problem/Left my home for the squatters,” a single lyric that balances the culpability of black flight and gentrification in the reshaping of poor neighborhoods like his. There’s always an underlying sense of responsibility as if he’s wondering what role he plays in society’s systems, particularly the ones dismantling his home. Even after experiencing the violence of commerce first hand, he still surrenders to his desires on “The Shining,” where a gospel staple becomes a critique of materialism: “This little light of mine/Shine a little different/Bright as I am, I am still victim/To buying, buying/I’m materialistic/Cause being broke hurts to feel, nigga.”
For 42 minutes, Jimi considers the tangle of poverty and wealth, his complicated relationship with his home fueling his richest work. His raps expand and unwind to suit any circumstance with a wide-ranging series of elastic flows that coil around the beat. I Can’t Go Home is a statement album, but not in the way it’s meant to be: like an eyewitness account from the frontlines of a shifting neighborhood, delivered by a rapper tracing his path from the projects to fame, and measuring the potential costs. If home truly is where the heart is, then there’s so much at stake when you lose it.
