There’s something so beautifully British about Cian Jay’s style of music. Whether it be his intelligent brand of lyrical wordplay that has an incredible amount of wit behind it, the charming delivery that feels like its come straight from a Londoner with his straight talking flow or his delectable production talents, he highlights the majesty that comes from London’s rap scene. He artfully expresses the unfiltered thoughts of a young adult in the UK in 2021, dealing with a myriad of subject matters ranging from mental health, love, loss and, most important of all, healing. The reason I say this is because the young musician has labeled 2021 as the year of healing, abandoning the mental torture we all experience during 2020 and focusing instead on cleansing our mind, body and soul. He ventured out to create something that would soundtrack this, after hundreds of rewrites, countless hours of procrastinating and new sonic spurts of inspiration he finally did that with the EP GRANITE. A stellar offering all around but one track lefts me enamoured from start to finish.

Grime is simple from a production standpoint, only a few scattered beats layering the soundscape, but it’s exactly this that makes this so enthralling. No bells and whistles to distract you, just an intimate atmosphere that allows the authentic lyrics, sounding like a personal conversation we’re listening in on, to truly shine. The emotion builds up, starting as a whisper before landing an explosive moment that has you reeling. You may not notice the growth lyrically on first listen, but once you go back you begin to connect the dots, reminiscent of a scene in a crime drama, and suddenly everything makes sense and leaves you mesmerised by Cian Jay’s artistic prowess for hours on end.