Jehst Heathens

While UK hip-hop has long bowed down to his majesty, Jehst is now addressing ‘Heathens’
directly, four tracks of venerable penmanship and riposte that includes two recent drops that
have kept fans in thrall of “the best British rapper of all time” (NME) and his ceaseless
reserves of unequivocal syllables.
“Still rock the Nuke Proof”, a chugging, deconstructed funk mosaic from Bastien Keb hangs
‘Heathens’ on the razor blade-sharp shrug of the shoulders. Riding the carousel revolutions
as he endorses a “tailor-made rhyme style, wake-and-bake lifestyle”, Jehst ducks and
weaves between the gaps of the track until he’s on the verge of making it a religious
experience.
Jaisu’s frothy jazz vapours for April’s ‘420 Every Day’ nudge along playful rhymes with mic
remaining on red alert, before Pitch 92 teases a 10 below red rag on the lectern-trashing
‘State of the Union’. Subsequently a vein starts to pop on ‘Body Bag’, a dislocated, zero
gravity freeze ray fired by Jetsun. As adept at making sure he’s “getting paid in full: Eric B &
Rakim” as he is at taking orders for toe tags, Billy Brimstone’s psychedelic phlegm comes
Michelin-starred: “You’re duck soup, I’m the pot-boiler / You’re ‘bout to see the end sooner
than you want, like a plot spoiler”.
Long “at the forefront of UK hip-hop” (The Guardian) as “the UK’s most natural rhymer who
simply doesn’t waste words” (Clash), Jehst’s career has spanned the pre-millennium
‘Premonitions’, his enduring YNR imprint that has housed the homegrown sovereignty
Kashmere, Cappo, Micall Parknsun and Verb T, and his last album, 2017’s ‘Billy Green is
Dead’, described as a "a qualified triumph" by The Wire magazine.