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So whats the deal with Jai Paul?
my partner sheepishly asked me the night before we left forCoachella.
Which, honestly, great question.
Pauls name is typically uttered with the kind of reverence reserved for critical darlings with deep catalogs.
If you were around for that first drop, though, you knew.
It was R&B beamed in from an alien planet.
Nothing sounded like it.
Um…thatJai Paul?
Would he be playing new music?
What did he even look like now?
(Answers: Yes, yes, and with much longer locks than he had on hisBait Onescover.)
To those on the ground, the set was a full-circle moment.
But those nerves quelled once he showed up.
Jai Paul was, indeed, alive and well if not predictably insular.
That same thread followed when he ended his forty-minute set with the classic Str8 Outta Mumbai.
Of Pauls much-mythologized music, Mumbai is the one that still lands hardest.
Its a deeply unique work, incorporating Ravi Shankar samples over stacked, stuttering synths.
The effect is a near-overwhelming wall of sound.
It felt like we were all joined together, rooting for Jai.
Unfortunately, to casual fans, all of this likely didnt mean much.
Whether this was intentional or not was besides the point.
