Reflections on Jonwayne
Since early childhood, we are taught to never judge a book by its cover, but it’s a lesson that doesn’t begin to stick until you come across real-world examples. For example, to fully accept that the man in the picture below is a gifted rapper requires a high level of comfort with cognitive dissonance.
It’s not even just that he’s pale — though obviously that’s part of it. The adjective that won’t leave my mind is as gross-sounding as it is apt, and it’s the word “schlubby”. I can’t even imagine how tired Jonwayne must be of people doubting he’s actually good at his job based on how he looks. Even so, he owns his appearance with an admirable level of snark. This is because he is not only a rapper; he is also grown-ass man.
I first discovered Jonwayne while scrolling through the 2014 lineup of Soundset, a hip-hop music festival which is organized by Rhymesayers and, as such, annually headlined by Atmosphere. (Yes, even now.) Even among the whitest major hip-hop festival lineup in the country, his face stood out among the clickable portraits, so obviously I had to listen to the sample song. I don’t remember what it was, but I was, like literally everyone else, shocked that the guy has real untaught technical skill. Unfortunately he was scheduled at the same time as Grieves, with whom I was especially taken in 2014, so I have yet to see his live performance. Since that missed connection I had been awaiting fresh material from Jon, and finally he released Rap Album 2 last year.
If you follow my posts, you may notice that Rap Album 2 was not among my 25 favorite albums of 2017. It still pains me to say that, because it was a really close call. The year 2017 was an especially strong year for my taste in music. Ultimately the album was cut from the list because, as a unit, it comes across as heavy and monochromatic, and although these qualities accurately reflect the album’s main subject — depression — they also unfortunately discourage repeat listens.
Regardless, Jonwayne at his best checks all the boxes of rapper virtue with a flourish: he’s smart, vulnerable, honest, self-aware, and even funny. His tracks tip-toe the line between empowering and self-indulgent, and, although he sometimes loses his balance and leaves the listener uncomfortable, much more often he falls on the side that inspires slam poetry snaps. The closing track, “These Words Are Everything”, is the album’s best and among my favorite songs of 2017. At the same time sobering and empowering, it is especially potent as the final note in an album that deals deeply and earnestly with feelings of insignificance, isolation, and disillusion.
Jonwayne’s precipitous style of delivery and low, smooth voice are reminiscent of MF DOOM (“just remember all caps when you spell the man’s name”), and, like DOOM, he provides his fair share of witty one-liners in other songs on Rap Album 2, most notably “TED Talk”. However, “These Words Are Everything” only contains one piece of wordplay that bears mentioning, a tongue-in-cheek shout-out to Facebook: “Married to the game, but it’s complicated.” In general, if you can imagine a wordplay-to-autobiography spectrum of hip-hop lyrical style that has DOOM or late Lil Wayne at the former end, and, say, Raekwon or 2Pac on the other, I would place Jonwayne comfortably in the middle. In the context of the album, “These Words” stands out as especially autobiographical; over the course of three verses, which begin “1996”, “2006”, and “2016”, Wayne tells the story of his come-up, which begins with him selling doodles to his grandfather for a quarter each. Jonwayne’s self-aware, often deadpan sense of humor is one of his most valuable artistic assets; other examples include, “This shit is better than friendship” and “My trifocal looks could kill some dumb occult crooks”.
Due to the couch-philosopher one-liners that Jon sprinkles throughout (“Life is too short for modesty”, “If you’re getting this for free, what you pay for then?” “Why go to church if I feel God in my home?”), the track also doubles as a chilled-out, semi-stream-of-consciousness manifesto. Amplifying this effect is the eponymous anchor placed at the end of each verse: “These words are everything, or maybe words are just my only thing.” The more you listen to the rest of Jonwayne’s catalog, the better this line becomes. For one thing, it epitomizes his tonal strength: the agility with which he weaves real talk together with jokes, blurring the lines between them but strengthening both. Even more importantly, its meaning epitomizes his whole story as an artist: the compelling battle between his surprising raison d’être, the pursuit of rap as an artistic medium, and its antagonist, crushing self-doubt. And in this episode of the story, at least, skillful rapping abides.
