Song You Need: Jim Legxacy shares a heartbroken, party-starting collage with “dj”

The FADER’s “Songs You Need” are the tracks we can’t stop playing. Check back every day for new music and follow along on our Spotify playlist.

Listening to Jim Legxacy's songs is like scrubbing through the voice memos of an artist who records whenever inspiration strikes. Tap. Here's a beach-side guitar perfect for a '00s Ja Rule beat. Tap. That's a shuffling Afrobeat rhythm Tap. Now we hear Jim Legxacy's voice, lilting and with the lingering tragedy of Tracy Chapman, unspooling loose thoughts and turning them into mantras. His music and assemblage of styles feel uniquely tied to South London, as much as Shibuya-kei's collage-like sound was a soundtrack for a specific time and place.

"dj," Legxacy's new song, is a sleek track perfect for the changing seasons. The traditional Jim Legxacy elements are there, but molded differently: the Afrobeat is denser and drill-laced, and the guitar line is more deeply steeped in emo melodies, both conspiring to highlight Legxacy's lovesick regrets. "You used to promise me you'd teach me how to DJ," he sings, his voice trembling slightly. "You had your dates and I would go to pick a song / I'd pick a song that reminded me of all the things we used to do." But rather than doubling down on the melancholy, the hook unleashes a blitzkrieg of drums egged on by a pirate radio sample, with Legxacy's whistful "No more" floating in the background. Few young artists are compiling different pop-adjacent sounds together as effectively as Jim Legxacy, and "dj" represents an exciting step forward.