#flyexam

J Givens – Fly Exam

My wife and I have quite different listening habits, she loves Motown and classic soul music, I love hip hop and dance music (EDM to our American cousins). The other way we differ is she loves to listen to an album once and then move on to the next one… whereas I’ll happily listen to the same album or track on repeat for days. For the past two weeks the track that been on repeat is J Givens’ March 10th and a third (feat. Braille) – I love it!

I first started listening to J Givens when I saw the music video for Caught In The Reign (any music video featuring a Christian Rapping at the Dome of the Rock is bound to get attention!). I like his style, his flow is very natural and playful, with punchlines a plenty.  As a Humble Beast artist you know that production is guaranteed to be good, and musically this means the album comes with depth and feeling. Listening to interviews with J Givens you can tell he takes his art very seriously and everything down to the colours used in the artwork are scrutinised. I love hearing things like this, I’d far rather artists were accused of putting too much thought into their craft than not enough!  

There’s quite a list of folks who have queued up to feature on Fly Exam, as well as J Givens you’ll hear from: Liz Vice, Beleaf, Odd Thomas, John Givez, Jackie Hill Perry, Marz Ferrer, Braille and Propaganda. Sometimes you get the impression that artists ‘prop up’ their album with features to try and give it extra kudos – this is not the case here. The features are simply icing on top of a cake baked by J Givens, the main substance of the album is all credit to J Givens. The album is strong and has a solid spine of content running through it, and some great imagery (both lyrically and in the supporting artwork).

I kinda gave the game away with my opening gambit of what my top track was, but in case you’re still interested which other tracks on the album caught my eye… my top three would be:

March 10th and a third (feat. Braille)

Super Lowkey

So Fly (feat. Beleaf)

Like the sound of this?

Back in September 2015 J Givens caused a real stir online as he released the first CHH music video using the brand new 360 feature on YouTube... make sure you watch it on YouTube.com or in the official YouTube app to see the full picture! The video features a Humble Beast backyard BBQ hangout and a game of dominoes between J Givens and Odd Thomas. All the way through you can drag the camera in any angle and see what’s going on (book reading, hair cutting, shed climbing and more!).

Check out these lovely links: 

facebook.com/pray4jgivens

twitter.com/pray4jgivens

youtube.com/HumbleBeastVideo