Music has always been an important part of my life, but I didn’t start to pay attention to new releases until the end of 2016. Even then, the releases I was interested in were artists I was already fans of, like Childish Gambino and J. Cole. 2017 is where I finally discovered new artists as they were putting out music. First, I remember coming across Sampha on a random Youtube recommendation of his “No One Knows Me (Like The Piano)” performance on Jimmy Fallon. But then, I remember finding this rapper out of Atlanta who was signed to Dreamville that people were raving about. From one minute into the first song on the first listen of The Never Story, J.I.D had sold me into thinking he was the next big thing. At the time, all it took was cool flows and a reference to Mumford & Sons in a rap song (they were my first favorite group as a teenager). That album turned me into a huge fan that led me to Earthgang and the rest of Spillage Village, as well as anyone that J.I.D would feature with that time period.
Watching J.I.D turn into a high profile rapper these past few years has been really fascinating. 2018’s DiCaprio 2 showed him bringing on big names like J. Cole and Joey Bada$$ onto his album, while still having room for iconic legends like Method Man and DJ Drama giving him cosigns. He was also featured on Revenge of the Dreamers 3, a Dreamville label project that had many big songs, most of which had J.I.D heavily featured in the songs, especially the biggest single “Down Bad”. During this time frame, I watched his shows grow from not even selling out a 400-person bar, to playing in front of tens of thousands of people 18-months later at Lollapalooza. But for as big as he got with these two projects, something happened during the pandemic that brought him to another level of popularity, he started collaborating with pop stars. He was featured on songs from Dua Lipa, Doja Cat, John Legend, Khalid, and Imagine Dragons, with the last collaboration even reaching the top 5 on the Billboard charts. None of these songs stood up to his main material in a quality sense, but it showed that many people in the industry consider him a name and force to be reckoned with.
Throughout these past few years of his popularity rising, he’s been teasing a sequel to The Never Story titled The Forever Story. He was heralding it as his best and most personal album to date, and now that it’s released, I can’t help but to agree with his assessment. The Forever Story takes everything that J.I.D has previously done great, and makes it even better! Of course, he doesn’t do any of this by himself. He still has lots of production from his DJ and producer Christo, but there is also production from James Blake, Kaytranada, JD Beck, Thundercat, Monte Booker, BADBADNOTGOOD, and more. Even the features themselves on here include everyone from fellow Dreamville labelmates Earthgang and Ari Lennox, to legends like Yasiin Bey and Lil Wayne. We’ll get to some of the individual features, but every single one brings something important to their respective songs.
The Forever Story balances introspective writing with accessible production really well. The song “Crack Sandwich” is a good example of this. The song has a more traditional boom-bap beat for the first half, but then switches to a minimalistic, haunted instrumental for J.I.D’s storytelling about being in New Orleans with all six of his siblings and getting into an all-out brawl after his sister got hit in the face. The song shows the closeness of the family and how they were all willing to get in a brawl and end up spending the night in jail just to support their sister. The song “Sistanem” is maybe the most personal song on the album. The song’s three verses detail a relationship with one of his sisters that show how they have gotten separated over time and it ends in a rather depressing place. James Blake also shows up on the chorus here to sing one line, which probably helps make the emotion behind the song hit even harder.
That emotion comes through on many songs on this album, especially in the middle of the album when the tempo slows down. The previously mentioned “Sistanem” is one-half of a two song tandem, with “Bruddanem” being the other half. The latter song features J.I.D and Lil Durk talking about how their brothers influenced their lives over this melodic, meandering bassline and percussion. J.I.D’s singing has also improved greatly on this album. He wasn’t a bad singer at all, but he got a vocal coach to help with his performances on this album, and it’s definitely made a difference. “Kody Blu 31” is almost a gospel song with the way the choir backs J.I.D’s powerful vocals during the chorus of the track. The song is in reference to a friend named Kody who wore number 31 and passed away. This track is to his family and telling them to keep their head up. He relates this to his own life by opening the song using a video he took of his family singing at his own grandma’s funeral. It’s honestly a miracle that this song is also easily listenable considering all this heartbreaking context behind it, but it is.
J.I.D’s writing here has improved even more than I expected it too! His bars have always been great, but the attention to detail here is next level! One classic line everyone is talking about is, “Lemme bare it all when I’m tellin’ God, you know I’ma rant when I talk to Jah.” The content of the line is clearly him talking to God, but including a reference to Grizzlies star Ja Morant in the line as well is genius! Another one is on the bar-heavy “Crack Sandwich” when he says, “Blood red, rum sippin’, they ain’t cut like this.” The “redrum” part of the bar is an obvious reference to The Shining, and there is also a rum called Cut rum. But even just as simple as the fact that being cut makes you bleed is something that’s not directly what the line is about, but is also another meaning you can extract from these nine words. There are lines like these all over the album that become more apparent with every listen.
The Forever Story is easily J.I.D’s most cohesive and thoughtful album yet. It sounds like he put years of work into this album, but he still manages to make his raps sound effortless. Everything from the transitions between songs, the beat transitions inside the same song, little song effects that coincide with his lyrics, the overall sequencing and storytelling, and so much more show that J.I.D is paying attention to every single detail that goes into making a body of work. While this will still easily end up being one of my favorite albums of the year, it still feels like there is another gear that J.I.D might be able to tap into. This could just be me as a huge fan thinking that he can somehow make something better than this album, but I think that he can. I have been saying that he can make something better for years though, but The Forever Story has changed that phrase from “I know J.I.D will make something better,” to “I think J.I.D will make something better.” The Forever Story is still undoubtedly one of best hip hop albums of the year and needs as many ears as possible on it.
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