Is This The Rapper Who Is Going To Save Hip-Hop?

Above is a new video from Jake Emlyn. It’s not important that you haven’t heard of him before, all you need to know is that he’s going to be the one to save hip-hop.

Because, let’s be honest, ever since The Notorious B.I.G packed crack and Slim Fast yoghurts into his Gucci holdall to jet off and meet Tupac in the Peloponnese peninsula, rap music has been devoid of purpose. Like a cheeseburger without the cheese, or Timbaland without a keyboard.

Sure, if you digest the contents of Complex like a rap fan that bleeds Instagram followers, then you’re probably certain that hip-hop has already been saved. But, you’re wrong. Kendrick loaded the gun with good kid, m.A.A.d city, Tyler took the glock off safety with Wolf and, on Acid Rap, Chance the Rapper blasted deathly shrapnel into the membrane of rap music’s famine ridden carcass. Hip-hop has never been worse.

Thankfully, Jake sent his press release through to our office yesterday and it included a bunch of chocolates, t-shirts and other pieces of physical information that will help save hip-hop.

He’s touting himself as The Cockney Willy Wonka, which sounds like the best gentrification iconography to happen to hip-hop since SisQo dyed his hair blonde and performed “Thong Song” in a sports bar. If the notion of a borderline paedophile that bullies fat children hasn’t salivated your taste-making buds, here’s a picture to help.

If every up-and-coming young buck started dressing like the illegitimate love-child of Tim Burton mise-en-scene and Charlie XCX’s Bebo profile, then perhaps the rap world would have shifted enough records to stop relying on headphone sales and PA appearances at Lava/Ignite.

Recently, a myriad of music websites have been starved for hits, because all the interesting things to say about hip-hop have been said, and opinions have finally run out. Thankfully, American super-site Pigeons and Planes have managed to mine for new journalistic resources, by showing their support for Jake.

“Emlyn sounds every bit the outlandish rap stylist, an inheritor of Kool Keith’s hyper-sexual, otherworldly lyrical exercises”

Pigs’n’Planes have a point. Because, where people like Jay Electronica have been writing banal flows devoid of complexity, Jake Emlyn is putting out the best couplets since Jay-Z first figured out that he didn’t need a pen to write. For example:

“I’m white trash, like Kate Nash”

“I’m from another planet where they’re rapping using futuristic gadgets and I’m moving to the gashes”

“My style icon is Olivia Newton John”

Unlike other urban orientated artists like Frank Ocean who stick to strict genre conventions and refuse to experiment, Jake is flirting with unchartered cultures, keen to bring together a mish-mash of genres like a rap game Mandela:

“I hang with badmans and folk bands, we start beef, call it peace, and hold hands”

Even R&B luminary Lamar is a fan.

As is rap culture aficionado Hermione Granger.

And a co-sign from real life rapper Riff Raff.

Before I watched Jake’s new video, I felt cold. I’d been unable to feel the warmth of rap music. Its fading embers filtered away to unlit kindling in the form of the Beast Coast. I was close to having a bath with a six-CD changer stocked with the worst mixtapes and albums of recent times – Joey Bada$$’s 1999, Tyler’s Wolf, Kendrick’s GKMC, Chance the Rapper’s Acid Rap, A$AP Rocky’s Long. Live. ASAP and Action Bronson’s Rare Chandeliers. But, since seeing this video, I feel content. I’m about to turn my life around and I have a future to look forward to. Thank you, Jake. The Wonka Hath truly Landed.