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JID: Legend in the Making

Twenty-two tracks from the most technically gifted rapper of his generation, caught at the point where the rest of the world was starting to notice.

JID

Destin Route came out of Atlanta by way of Hampton University, where he was on a football scholarship, and by way of Spillage Village, the collective built around EARTHGANG that also drew in 6LACK and Mereba. He signed to J. Cole's Dreamville in 2017.

What makes him remarkable is purely technical in the first instance: an extremely high, nasal delivery, an ability to switch rhythmic patterns mid-bar, and breath control that lets him rap at speeds where most people lose diction. Then, underneath that, the writing — dense, funny, and far more interested in specificity than in flexing.

This playlist catches him mid-ascent, which is a good time to hear an artist: enough catalogue to judge, not yet enough fame to distort it.

What to listen for

"Off Deez" with J. Cole is the technical showcase and the one to play for anyone who doubts the claim above.

"NEVER" is the breakout, and "Workin' Out" in the Colors session strips the production away entirely, which is the fairest test any rapper can face.

"Tiiied" with 6LACK and Ella Mai is the melodic side, and Ari Lennox's "Broke" is the best guest verse here — light, conversational, completely in service of someone else's song.

Mereba's "Sandstorm" and Spillage Village's "Willow Tree" are the collective's own records and show where the aesthetic comes from.

"Down Bad" from the Revenge of the Dreamers III sessions is the posse cut, and the Dreamville compilation approach — a warehouse full of artists, ten days, whatever survives — produced a genuine amount of good music.

Anderson .Paak's "Lockdown" remix is the 2020 protest record, and Imagine Dragons' "Enemy" is the improbable global smash from the Arcane soundtrack that took him to an audience that had no idea about any of the above.

Go deeper

The Never Story (2017) and DiCaprio 2 (2018) are the albums to start with; The Forever Story (2022) is the ambitious one.

EARTHGANG's Mirrorland and Spillage Village's Spilligion are the necessary context, and Mereba's The Jungle Is the Only Way Out is the best album to come out of that circle.

Listening note: play one of these at half speed if you want to see the machinery. JID changes his rhythmic pattern several times within a single verse, and at normal tempo it reads as energy; slowed down it turns out to be arithmetic. Very few rappers can do it and fewer still make it sound casual.

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