When late on Saturday night, an 'album' appeared online allegedly to be from the elusive and mysterious Jai Paul, the social media sites were sent into a frenzy, and for more than 24 hours it was the sole topic of conversation for many of the 23-year-old songwriter and producer's fans.
With rumours rife for the last few weeks of there being a release in the offing, at first the Bandcamp announcement selling the 16 track untitled work for £7 was thought to be nothing more than a sneaky little number - as My Bloody Valentine delivered ealier this year. Then there started to be a few questions, and although there was no word from Jai Paul himself or his label, XL Recordings, there seems to day (April 15) to be an answer with Paul seemingly having emailed Dazed journalist Owen Myers that it was an 'illegal leak': “I will be releasing a statement later today about the illegal leak. I have not released a new record,” with the material having been gleaned from a stolen laptop.
A short time ago, Paul took to Twitter to state: “To confirm: demos on Bandcamp were not uploaded by me, this is not my debut album. Please don’t buy. Statement to follow later. Thanks, Jai”
Jai Paul, the London-born songwriter and record producer, first came to notice in 2010 when his demo 'BTSTU' began receiving widespread blog coverage, and UK national airplay by DJs including Gilles Peterson, Zane Lowe and Nick Grimshaw.
In December 2010, Paul was longlisted for the BBC Sound of 2011 poll. 'BTSTU' was playlisted on BBC Radio 1 following its release as a digital download in April 2011. On May 20 2011, Canadian hip hop artist Drake leaked a track titled 'Dreams Money Can Buy' via his blog, and later 'Till The End Of Time', a song by Beyoncé surfaced online. Both tracks feature a sample of Paul's 'BTSTU' demo.
In March last year, Jai Paul uploaded a new demo titled 'Jasmine' to his Soundcloud page, (the demo was given an official release via XL on April 9 2012), where it clocked over 500,000 plays within a month.
Since then little has been heard from Jai Paul's camp, though rumours of an imminent release had fuelled speculation that the 16 untitled tracks that were uploaded Bandcamp on Saturday night was the real McCoy.
For those who haven't yet heard what was there - though may not be for much longer - here it is:
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