Happy 15th Anniversary to J-Live’s third studio album The Hear After, originally released July 19, 2005.
J-Live has always seemed like a genuinely nice guy. I’ve never met him personally, but from our occasional interactions on Twitter, every interview I’ve ever read with him, and because he was formerly a schoolteacher in his local community, he’s just always seemed nice. He also happens to be extremely nice with the microphone.
The first time I ever heard J-Live—as I suspect is the case with many others—was in 1997 on the DJ Premier mixtape New York Reality Check 101. A brilliant snapshot of the best New York City underground hip-hop at the time, the compilation begins with J-Live’s 12-inch single “Braggin’ Writes.”
By 2001, the year in which J-Live appeared on the excellent song “Great Live Caper” from producer J. Rawls’ The Essence of J. Rawls album, and also dropped his own debut album The Best Part, I was a huge fan. Since then, J-Live has continued to release great music and is one of my favorite artists of all time. The Best Part is an excellent album, so is the 2002 follow-up All of the Above, and The Hear After is up there too.
The greatest rappers are the ones with the ability to tell fully fleshed-out stories over the course of an entire song and tackle serious social issues while still being entertaining. J-Live can do all of this, and very well. Narrative-based songs like “Coming Home,” about the highs and lows of being a touring musician, not only show how skilled J-Live’s pen is, but also how relatable his music can be. In fact, the honesty in his words are one of J-Live’s most endearing qualities. This is a real man with real grown-up problems we can all relate to.
“Brooklyn Public Part 1,” meanwhile, is a biting rebuke of the local school system delivered in a captivating way with skillful lines and versus such as: “Low on tolerance, high on ridicule / Even the infirmary's inhospitable / Assembly required, Metal detectors seeming unjust but inspired by shots fired / Terms like zero-tolerance and lock-down / Aging out, if you ask me, does not sound / Like education / But I suppose that's a cause and effect / When the city spends more on incarceration.”
Something else that stands out about J-Live is how much he likes playing with simple words. A skilled songwriter can say a lot without the need for too more verbiage. As such, J-Live is often economical with his rhymes while still packing each bar full of meaning. Like on “Fire Water,” where he uses a simple, uncomplicated rhyme style to deliver an extended metaphor about his music being as powerful and as potent as hard liquor.
Different to The Best Part where he enlisted heavyweight producers like Pete Rock, DJ Premier and Prince Paul to provide the soundtrack, J-Live produced most of his second album, All of the Above, himself. He carries this through to The Hear After, and by this point in his career had really begun to find his feet as a producer. His style is breezy, funky and uplifting, and therefore matches the content of his lyrics entirely.
For me, one of the most intriguing beats on The Hear After is “The Sidewalks,” where J-Live incorporates a synth line that wouldn't have sounded out of place on a Dr. Dre record circa 1993. It’s actually a bit ironic in the sense that a song all about J-Live’s love for New York, and his adopted city of Philadelphia, should sound so west coast-ish.
Elsewhere, J-Live is more cautious with his production to ensure that the words stay center stage with no distraction, like on the aforementioned “Coming Home.” The simple guitar lick and sparse beat play the background without taking focus away from the story being told in the lyrics.
The Hear After does have a couple of placements from outside producers, including one from Oddisee (“Aaw Yeah”) a few years before he found his own fame as an acclaimed producer and rapper. On “Listening,” J-Live co-produces with the great James Poyser, who adds some welcome extra flourish to proceedings.
In my opinion, J-Live has never made a bad album or EP, and there have been many of them since The Hear After. He’s an unsung hero of mine, and one of those artists that if you know, you know. And if you don’t know, then you really should.
LISTEN: