Jay Electronica: ‘An Album Is a False Concept’

Update (Feb. 23, 3:32 p.m. EST):

Jay Elect isn’t too happy with websites running the above quote as a headline, and in a series of tweets today, he announced he’d no longer be doing interviews. Read his tweets below.

@fwmj @sdq0218 The Click Bait thirst is real. What’s even worse is I had a long talk w these folks about this very thing b4 I agreed 2 it.

— سيف الله (@JayElectronica) February 23, 2017

I’m actually done w interviews period. The ppl can just get it from me via my social media now.

— سيف الله (@JayElectronica) February 23, 2017

Shame on all of those ppl in that room I looked in the eye and had this talk w before I agreed to do something I told you guys I didn’t want

— سيف الله (@JayElectronica) February 23, 2017

Shame on y’all.

— سيف الله (@JayElectronica) February 23, 2017

Original Story:

NBA All-Star Weekend just took place in New Orleans, all eyes on the Bayou as Mardi Gras gets underway as well. Many of hip-hop’s finest descended on NOLA for the weekend festivities, Jay Z appearing on stage with Jay Electronica, telling him, “Let’s go put this album out.” That raised plenty of questions from fans who have been waiting nearly a decade for Jay Elect’s debut Act II: Patents of Nobility (The Turn), though the enigmatic rapper challenges the very concept of an album in a new interview with Billboard.

Electronica first says that he needs to be completely satisfied with the album in order to release it, adding, “Then again, an album is a false concept anyway. An album is something that was created by corporations as a product to make money,” he said. “People have been making music, doing plays, and telling stories around fires for trillions of years. I like albums but I’m not too really handcuffed to the concept of that.”

Jay spoke with Complex as well, saying that he still gets questions regarding the debut project. “It’s humbling that after all these years anybody still has any interest in what I’m doing,” he says. “As far as an album, I would like to put out an album myself. Nobody in the world wants a Jay Electronica album out more than I do. I release music in my own time… things evolve… over the trajectory of your life… you can’t put a stopwatch on that.”

In recent years, Jay has appeared alongside Mac Miller, Chance The Rapper, Big Sean and more as a featured artist, and back in August, there was a notion that Act 2 was dropping at the top of the new year, though that can now be classified as a red herring.

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