Available on: Sincerely Yours free mixtape

Anyone with a keen ear for Balearic pop will have received an extra present this Christmas, as December 24 saw the free digital release of a mixtape by jj, titled jj kills and consisting of the duo’s trademark glacial vocals layered over instrumentals ripped wholesale from the heart of commercial hip-hop. Whilst this might have been considered a bizarre conceit for an album only a few years ago, we’re now living in a world where, between Kanye, Drake, Wayne and Rihanna, bearing your soul seems more hip-hop than ever, and jj take advantage of this, wielding raw emotion onto heavyweight beats to create something special, and a logical extension of the group’s history of covering rap songs (see their versions of Lil Wayne’s ‘Lollipop’ and ‘My Life’ on past albums).

There’s an interesting juxtaposition between the depth of emotion implicit in jj’s vocals and original tracks that were often brazen about their superficiality. This is most noticeable on opener ‘Still’ which finds the instrumental from ‘Still D.R.E.’ imbued with a tenderness totally absent from the original, while M.I.A’s ‘Paper Planes’ and Jay-Z’s ‘Empire State of Mind’ are twisted into languorous hymns to fractured relationships and childhood reminiscences. As Elin Kastlander’s sultry voice drags itself across Notorious B.I.G’s ‘Angels’, there’s a childish joy in re-discovering such familiar and instantly recognisable samples, echoing the theme of nostalgia that’s bound all of jj’s releases to date. That’s not to say that jj kills is overly sentimental. ‘Kill Them’ finds Elin retorting to ‘haters’ one minute before intimately addressing her lover the next, while ‘Pressure Is A Privilege’ features a passable impression of an r’n’b diva proper, her chorus sandwiched between verses by Dre and Jay Z. However it’s telling that the latter is the most conventional, as well as the least interesting, song on display here.

As the mixtape closes on a heavily auto-tuned medley of covers from Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, it’s left unanswered whether this signposts a new direction for the group. What’s more likely that this is a heartfelt and enjoyable diversion by two hip-hop lovers having a little fun between albums.

James Waldron