Last year, DC rapper Jay IDK broke into the blogosphere’s consciousness with his visionary SubTrap album. Adopting the “suburban trap” phrase not just as an album title but an “ignorantly delivering knowledge” musical aesthetic, IDK is currently prepping Empty Bank, the followup to his debut project. The full details of the heavily conceptual IDK’s latest work haven’t been revealed, but he’s released four singles and took the unique step of crafting a tracklist that spelled out the phrase, “Curse My Nigga Mentality, All I Care About Is Spending Money Somebody Needs to Help Me But I Can’t Trust Nobody (Lurkin).”
“I Picture” is the latest track, a number that highlights his ability to stuff nuggets of pointed insight into a soundscape usually relegated to irresistibly vapid lyrics. He starts off bluntly: “When I picture sellin’ dope, I see big fat ol’ asses, big Cartier glasses, and champagne in my glasses.”
Jay augments the hook’s message with dizzying lyricism from the perspective of a kid blinded by the light of materialism. “I don’t like to work for my shit, what is worth when you only have fun?” he asks, over a creeping beat that sounds like he sampled an alternate dimension’s X-Files theme. “Vices gonna make me go blind,” he surmises. “I Picture” is another character driven track from IDK that seemingly pulls from bits of Jay IDK’s existence in the DMV.
Empty Bank is due out August 26th, a year to the day of SubTrap’s release. You can listen to “I Picture” below.
