22-year-old Londoner Jay Prince made waves earlier this year with his BeFor Our Time EP, but his latest project Beautiful Mercy is his most personal yet. Through its silky kicked-back beats and barbed lyricism, the rapper paints a portrait of love and loss in nuanced shades. But no track hits harder than "Juice," the collaboration with Minnesota rapper/singer Allan Kingdom that sees Prince's frustrated line People come around and they go, that's true weave in and out of Kingdom's cry: Why do you pretend you were ever there for me?
"'Juice' represents overcoming things that hold you back, people that try to bring you down, and really believing in yourself," Jay Prince told The FADER over email. "'Juice' is a record I made to get a lot off my chest. It's never that often I really delve into things that had me in a dark place, but at the time I was going through a rough patch in my life where I wasn’t feeling like myself."
Prince also explained a little about how the link-up with Kingdom came about. "Having Allan Kingdom on this song was a must. I’m a fan of his work and I really respect his craft. We followed each other on Twitter and I hit him up about the record. It was almost finished but it was just missing a piece. I just gave him the song with no chorus and left him to do what he does best. Once I heard what he did, I just knew it was the one. It was the perfect message and spoke to me directly."
Listen to the track above (pre-order Beautiful Mercy here), and afterwards watch True North, The FADER's documentary on Allan Kingdom.
