Paul would exit the public eye for several years, and all traces of the leak would quietly vanish from the web. “Please don’t buy.”įrom there, the album existed in infamy. “To confirm: demos on Bandcamp were not uploaded by me, this is not my debut album,” Jai Paul tweeted shortly after the songs hit the web. It might have launched one of the biggest careers of the 2010s were the album not an unauthorized leak. Psychedelic and experimental love songs written intimately, their specifics oozing a diary-like vulnerability. Then, a trove of music amounting to Paul’s debut appeared on Bandcamp. Paul followed “BTSTU” with “Jasmine,” formally released in 2012 by XL Recordings. Earlier this month, more than a decade after its release, he performed the track for the first time in front of an audience, at Coachella, still sounding unmoored by the linear constrictions of time.
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This was all before Paul even released a full EP. A singer-songwriter by the name of Niia uploaded a cover version of “BTSTU” to her SoundCloud page as part of a remix contest that would result in Beyoncé sampling the track on “End of Time” from her album 4. Drake’s longtime producer, Noah “40” Shebib, flipped Paul’s opening credo on the track: “Don’t fuck with me/Don’t fuck with me” for the beat on 2011’s “Dreams Money Can Buy,” arguably one of Drake’s best songs. Even today, attempting to explain the song’s impact almost feels like recounting a dream. Paul’s music seemed to come from somewhere between the past and the future. “I’m back, and I want what is mine.” The posturing feels more spiritual than literal.
“I know I’ve been gone a long time,” he sings on the chorus. In 2010, British musician Jai Paul emerged on Myspace with “BTSTU,” a brooding, ambient hymn for a generation.
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