A Decade Since his Start, Jay Prince’s Debut Album, SHINE, Shines a Light on the Range of his Still-Evolving Musical Journey
Evan Dale | June 10, 2025
There are debut albums where the word debut feels a little understated. Jay Prince’s is one of those. The London-born, LA-based rapper, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist isn’t a newcomer – not by a long shot. At this point, he’s a veteran that’s been releasing singles and EP’s at a steady clip for a decade. And his rate of release is only turned up another notch when it comes to featuring on a wide-ranging mosaic of tracks.
In 2015, his introductory mixtape, Before Our Time introduced listeners to his uniquely meditative flow coalescing with his introspective nature as a lyricist. Ever since, something in his poeticism and storytelling has felt deeply relatable to listeners. In 2018, CHERISH saw him cement his position as a pillar of the emerging UK hip-hop and Neo-Soul renaissance, alongside friends and featuring artists like Mahalia and Kojey Radical. Ever since, he’s been a cornerstone of the movement and a prolific collaborator. 2019’s WONDER explored a more hard-hitting, bass-thudding corner of his scope boiling over with moody bangers like Beamlight and Blessed Now. Ever since, he’s had the knack in both production and delivery to fold hard-hitting heaters into his usually more mellow collections. And a smattering of subsequent three-track EP’s, singles, and features have only further detailed his stylistic indefinability, all without ever bringing a true album to fruition that could officially be stamped his debut.
With SHINE – that long-overdue debut album – he ties together the broad reach of his musical journey to this point, navigating through the extensive swath of auditory aesthetics, friends and collaborators, and hard-earned skillsets that he’s woven into his sound over a decade of consistent work defining, then redefining his now many lanes. Spending different chapters of his journey always in expanding exploration, SHINE emerges a project undefined by preconceptions of a single genre, and defined instead by one artist’s willingness to bend his stylistic patterns at every turn, almost all the while providing a directional sense of musical warmth.
SHINE was always bound to be what it is. And that’s immense. 43 minutes doesn’t make it a marathon. But it is vastly detailed, ornamented with cinematic grandeur from its very intro, where swirling strings and an emotionally explosive choir introduce a listener to a project that isn’t necessarily billed as conceptual, but is driven by moments, samples, and excerpts of filmic opulence and poetic stitching. Listen to the waning stanzas of Old Ways and the entirty of the Motherland Interlude, and the that conceptual sense is only further reinforced. But the moment the intro, Nation, cuts away, it does so towards what can only be described as a reminiscent Jay Prince track threaded with the layers of productive detail and a never-fading focus on attentive lyricism that will continue to be present through the end of the project.
Imbibing Beamlight and Blessed Now, How Far is underlined by layers of vocal run and hi-fi synth chords, setting the stage for Jay Prince to methodically pulse through the beat with his signature flow, and then for friend and featuring artist, Sam Wise to do the same. In so many good ways, it starts out feeling expected, exciting for old fans to have more of what has always made Jay Prince such a reliable source of uniquely oft-Summertime oriented hits, even if they come in many musical forms. But then, the beat devours itself, falling inwards through a drum breakdown before leaving the listener in its upside down. There, unnerving chords and a deep bassline open both artists up to explore a moodier aspect of their flow. That unexpectedness, and the details it involves, are a part of what separates SHINE from the rest of Jay Prince’s expansive canon. His tendency to surround his listener with compositional depth and subsequent emotional warmth are another aspect of his evolution.
Tracks like Old Ways, where Ferench-Senegalese soulstress, anaiis’s subtle melody envelopes the entire beat, reinforce the signature flow, and deeply personal storytelling that has been foundational to Jay Prince’s music since day one. Something similar can be said for Ace, which taps Neo-Soul trailblazer, Elujay for a smooth and soulful summer anthem, all without ever giving up that omnipresent ability to so effortlessly express, and subsequently connect with his listeners.
Jay Prince finds further explorations of his flow and lyrical prowess in Solitude and U Shine which both bloom with upbeat positivism, folding guitar chords in and out of contributions from Estelle and Oddisee.
But then there are tracks feel ultimately new for Jay Prince, and make SHINE even more spacious than the sum of his musical considerations to date. Cold Hearted blends a bass-plucking, ethereally keyboardist bout of production with a pop-nuanced, vocally driven run from Jay Prince, before delving into his more up-tempo course. Us is a lavishly composed blossom of instrumentation, with the famed horn of Chief Adjuah at its core, that sees Jay Prince elatedly maneuver through self-assured messages of positivity and strength in his community.
If there's an element of Jay Prince's focus here that truly draws throughline from beginning to end of SHINE, even as he so widely reaches with his many sounds, it’s that near-omnipresence of upbeat emotion. No matter the musical space that Jay Prince and his many talented collaborators may fill up with a song, SHINE is never untouched by messages of at least overcoming if not outright celebrations of emotional warmth. And by keeping the emotion of his debut album so central to its identity, he opens up – and fully succeeds – in exploring his auditory aesthetic further than ever before.
It would be challenging to think that a decade in, Jay Prince is still introducing parts of his musical self to his listeners, but SHINE shines a warm light on a continuation of what he’s already done so well, and a whole lot of what new he's pursuing.