Metal Lungies

Blu released a new eleven track project called jesus on Tuesday. Most artists would have preceded such a release with months of teasers, leaks, interviews, music videos, and behind-the-scenes clips, but Blu posted a link to the project on Twitter without any explanation.

He didn’t even link directly to the album. He posted a link to a thread on the KanyeToThe.com forums which then links to a Bandcamp page where you can stream the album or download it for ten dollars. All of the text on the page is lowercase. The artist field just says “b”. The given release date is June 1, 2011 and when you try to view the lyrics for each song, there are cryptic descriptions like “lucky left e .” and “r a g g i d y.” The only concrete description is “production by alchemist, madlib, hezekiah, knxwledge, nathan & g o d lee barnes,” but it doesn’t say who produced which tracks.

It’s not entirely clear what jesus is. Is it an EP? An unreleased album? A mixtape of loose tracks? When were these songs recorded? I’m not even sure how you’re supposed to write the name. It’s annotated as “je s u s ” on Bandcamp but the cover says “jesus.” I can’t include the little triangle symbol, because WordPress keeps displaying it as a question mark.

Blu fans are used to his oddball web presence. He does stuff like this all the time. Maybe Blu thinks this discreet approach affords him a cool mystique. Maybe he’s too lazy to hype a project for three weeks before he drops it. Maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he thinks eschewing a promo cycle emphasizes the music, which I’ve ignored for four straight paragraphs.