Posts tagged down

This only happens every so often – Raj Lovesoul on Jay Sean’s Career… Here’s the new video called ‘Down’ feat. Weezy F.B. a.k.a Lil Wayne.

There are 2 things that the great DJ in the sky made it easy for British DJ’s to do.  1) blink, and 2) hate on Jay Sean.  I’ve heard countless people from regular joe’s, to so called tastemakers, say Jay Sean is this and that, he’s arrogant, he doesn’t really talk to people, etc, etc.  Well to be honest, if I had a video like this to deliver, I wouldn’t allow myself to get distracted.  From time to time, I’ll casually sing Jay’s praises.  It’s been widely accepted that he’s carried the ‘britsh asian boy does RnB’ title on his back for years (sorry raghav, your names not on the list, you’ll have to que and pay).

But this video is out of here… as in Estelle feat. Kanye West… outta here.  Let me back peddle.  I heard this on the radio, and I personally thought that the track was found when someone at Cash Money hacked into Akon’s PC and raided the recycle bin, and nabbed Colby O’Donnis’s A&R blueprint too.  I couldn’t tell the difference between this, JLS and countless others.  I was almost ready to take Hova’s beat and record ‘Death of Akon-Tunes’.  But the reality is, only Jay Sean sets the standards for Jay Sean – and he knew where he was going.  We are not expected to like everything he does straight away because he himself is on new ground everytime he grows musically, and this video has impressed me because it works at a global level.  There is no music market that will not go crazy for the visual, the traditional urban RnB rap consumers will eat up Lil Wayne’s verse (it worked for Bobby V and Lloyd), and Jay’s 2-4-1 creatine vouchers are subtley leveraged in the first few seconds (this would be a very different review if dude had his shirt off through-out).

As far as the dancing, probably the best move I’ve seen in his career.  Did he do a 8 bar break and bust a move through it like Usher, nope.  But he pulled of the ‘dancing without really dancing’ thing perfectly, allowing him to explore this aspect further in his videos further if he wishes.  I am now a fan of this track, but I’m more impressed by the fact that Jay has kicked in the door to the US, but stepped back before running through it to think through his strategy (Robbie Williams, get Jay’s BB Pin, dude figured it out).  Also, hearing ‘Ride It’ get washed away by the thunder and wound down was a nice touch to… the efforts didn’t go unnoticed.

Word is ‘My Own Way’ will be re-released for the US, possibly with a new title, in October 2009.  Support Jay at his site or on twitter.