When I interviewed Jxylen last summer, the Springfield poet/rapper touched on the idea of creating the life you want to live without succumbing to outside pressures. If you lose people through this sacrifice, so be it. “The real ones that are supposed to be here will be here,” he told me. “Look within because all the answers you’re looking for are within you.”
While maybe not in the traditional stylistic sense, Jxylen’s music has always carried a soulful temperament to me, which is represented through a sincere dedication to untangling a panoply of psychological conflicts and worldly issues. He’s soulful in the sense that his mind and spirit often dictates how he approaches his most vivid raps. “I like recording alone, I don’t like distractions around me when I record,” he told me in that same interview.
For many who’ve followed him, we’ve seen Jxylen toil with these battles through different vignettes in the past, but never has his vision sounded so cohesively pensive than it does on his debut album, Project Mayhem.
The project, which is framed and inspired by David Fincher’s 1999 cult classic Fight Club, finds Jxylen using his truculent delivery to bob and weave his way through some of the grimiest and grungiest beats so far this year, thanks to producers AUR, JADOOKS, Ntvrme, nomstks, OLEHEAD and The Heretic. When considering the album’s inspiration, the soiled canvas fits the mold of a poorly-lit basement, kind of like the one found in the movie.
For most of the album, Jxylen re-contextualizes the movie’s lurid elements to fit his own pursuit of understanding the world around him, and the egregious flaws that come with it.
There’s a certain level of anarchy embedded in the album, but Jxylen injects the atmosphere with an added texture of modern realism that gives the album a necessary punch. He takes the “sheep versus leader” narrative, and douses it in issues worth evaluating, and stakes worth fighting for. Tracks like “The Speech” and “Norton’s View” subtly explore this thematic undercurrent where social media is our own hellscape for uninformed critiques and racially insensitive pandering. “How you gon tell us to be free, and go critique our lives…That shit don’t make sense,” he spits with uneasiness on the latter.
“From societal standards and racial conflicts going on in the world it’s really hard to watch and to add on with how so much is pushed onto people especially with social media you realize a lot of people are lost simply because they’re looking for outward sources for happiness instead of looking with in and following their own calling,” Jxylen tells me.
The desire to create a conceptual album of this nature began way back when he first started making music. Jxylen said he wasn’t ready during that moment in time however, and instead decided to grow as a person before exploring the idea of his debut album once again. A few years have gone by, the world became even more chaotic, and Project Mayhem was birthed.
“Overall, this album I wanted to give people the courage to step into their own power, heal and be free without limiting self and following a sheep mindset,” added Jxylen. “You being you is enough, you don’t have to prove that to anyone else in this world.”
Even with a handful of producers on the album, Jxylen is able to quarterback a cohesively ominous set of songs that breathe enough air for the Springfield native to wax poetic. His stream-of-conscious approach is equally more focused than ever before, with bars that straddle between vividly personal, dutifully referential (“Tyler Durden” and “Blxck Sheeps Clothing”) and understandably fed up.
He does an excellent job mimicking a resilient fighter on “Jacob’s Ladder” by implementing a more sinister version of Snoop Dogg’s “Nuthin’ but a G Thang” entrance on the chorus, hyping himself up as if he’s entering the ring with Mortal Kombat opponents.
Later on, the project’s centerpiece-“Memento”-demonstrates Jxylen’s poetic side with metaphorical writing that’s as sharp and ferocious as the tone in his voice. “Open your mind up/Watch my words go blur right through your focus,” he raps over a sludge-filled beat that could fit on any Griselda album.
Aside from these great moments of writing, what makes Project Mayhem a rewarding listen is Jxylen’s ability to weave together his own personal narrative in such a sincerely concise manner without any Fight Club tidbit or literary reference feeling out-of-place. And while the album may seem uneasy at times, Jxylen ties it altogether with a cathartic finale on “Blxck Sheeps Clothing,” where he softly sings “The seed was planted, so I rose (what a line!)” before breaking out in a flurry of bars to reaffirm the themes of the project over a reserved jazz instrumental. In these final moments, Jxylen is heeding by his words, staring at a mirror, and looking within.
Listen to one of the best projects of the year so far below.
