Jay Electronica has come out of his shell to give a rare interview in Nigeria of all places. The hermetic rapper spoke with The Beat 99.9 in Lagos, Nigeria while visiting the country. Music, he said, was only the secondary reason for traveling to Nigeria. "Like any black man in America, I was disconnected from myself and my family for a long time," he said. "That's why I'm here in Nigeria: to reconnect with my family. I'm saying that because I'm glad to be reconnected, back with my black family."
Of course, a fan asked about the status of his album. And, of course, Jay didn't give a definitive answer. "We're always expecting an album sometime soon," he said. "But anybody that knows Jay Electronica knows that that's the wrong question to be asking."
He also spoke on Kanye West:
"Kanye's a black God, and we love him. Kanye's a beautiful brother. We gotta be careful about anything we hear. We all got our faults and character defects. Kanye, as far as I know, is a beautiful human being. Very beautiful brother physically and spiritually."
And the current state of hip-hop:
"Yes, it is dumbed down hip-hop. It's not what I grew up on. But I would be a bold-faced liar if I said I didn't listen to some Fetty Wap and Drake. I know the lyrics to "I'm in love with the CoCo" and all that. Rap is poetry, and we come from the era of Rakim and Nas. That side of me can critique a Young Thug and these new types of people. At the same time, it's young, black people using what they have to come up out of an environment they're in to better their lives and their loved ones."
Listen to the full interview above.
