You may think you know the Baby J sound. He’s the man who put smiles on faces with Mpho Skeef’s supremely chirpy Holla, and struck gold with his ska-stepping, all-star remix of Valerie for girl of the moment Amy Winehouse. The track reached number two in the national charts, stayed there for eleven weeks and spent five weeks at the top of MTV’s airplay chart. His soul patent, comparable to the now ubiquitous Kanye West method of using sped-up samples, produced Rukus's heavily rotated road lullaby Let It Go, taken from J’s much-applauded album FTP. He’s been hailed ‘The UK’s Best Underground Producer’ at the Urban Music awards and FTP was nominated for two BBC 1xtra mixtape awards, in ‘Best mixtape’ and ‘Best concept’ categories.
Baby J is a one-man-magnet when it comes to working with the cream of UK hip-hop and R&B, from home-grown thoroughbreds to below-radar up-and-comers and his own personal squad of emcees that always benefit from a Baby J leg-up. Presumably he needs to man the mic booth on a one-in, one-out basis, judging by the preceding, sixty plus emcee FTP2 mixtape. Jehst, Sir Smurf Lil, Dirty Diggers’ Young Max, Skibadee and Dynamite MC are the iceberg’s tip to what is a bulging beats rolodex. On the album front, J contributed notably to Skinnyman’s all-conquering Council Estate of Mind, and Blade’s Guerrilla Tactics. And all this is after putting in the groundwork earlier in his career by hooking-up with Wu-Tang Clan, Brand Nubian and dead prez no less.
However, Baby Food – a full decade on from J’s UK-meets-US debut The Birth - is based on a distinctly sour palette. Sure, he’s prepared another menu of UK A-listers and those bound to occupy one-to-watch column inches. But J isn’t his usual chipper, optimistic self, though it does show that he’s not one to cook with the same ingredients time after time, particularly with his use of rawer materials, ‘traditional’, in-the-flesh instruments and declaring Baby Food’s austerity as a sample-free zone. It’s a morose, distrustful look at the ways of the world, and the opener If I Could Do It All Again, a stripped down, country-smoked folk lament featuring despairing songstress Jaymay and streams of conscience from NYC’s A-Alikes, shows Baby J ain’t playing.
Ashley ‘Asher D’ Walters sounds like he’s been on the wrong end of a few fibs and looks to put the record straight on Lies, showing Baby J’s R&B radar remains bang-on with Nathan on the hook. Farma G gives humankind a frosty reception, but it’s as a weary troubadour rather than Task Force firer on Love and Peace, backed by a school choir and more folk, fiddle-playing etchings. Lowkey is another struggling to make the sense of the day on the piano-drizzled Learn to Live Again, with Baby J engaging his crossover/mass market intuition thanks to Davey MacManus of The Crimea providing an exasperatedly cracked chorus (think Timbaland putting on One Republic, but with a UK frostiness). The similar combination of hip-hop rhymes set to acoustic reflections makes Its Time a further distinguished departure, with David Gibb supporting Moorish Delta 7’s Malik and his narratives of youth gone awry.
The encompassing air is pensively rain-sodden and understatedly subdued. Enter Jun Tzu, the incendiary Belfast blast-off rollicking over club-barging drum machines as Wee Jonny brings the album’s spite to boiling point. The same drum machines that are given short shrift on the posse shot Midlands Anthem repping Coventry, Birmingham, Nottingham and everywhere in between. There, it’s not all doom and gloom, with Alex Blood brightening the scene on the lead single Wake Up on some seize-the-day business. In the mould of The Streets’ Fit But You Know It, Ruff Nek Set The Trend has Million Dan rocking n rolling in inimitable jumping-bean fashion, showing he can despatch any beat bounced at him. The chorus comes courtesy of Mark Ronson’s live show vocalist Tawiah. The essence of Let It Go sees Ironbraidz and Mellow Baku share the sweet sentiments of Inspiration.
Posted by Anna Nathanson
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