​Jay Lyn Gatz 'I’ma Need Therapy After This' Album Review

By: Hector De La Rosa

​Emotionally messy, lissome, and colorfully woven with grit best describes the artist Jay Lyn Gatz (JLG) and his body of work I’ma Need Therapy After This.

What makes this statement factual?

The album cover, the verve of his delivery, music selections, to lyrical dispositions. The album cover stands out by displaying the artist sporting a jacket/sweater whose arms tucked in is interpreted as being grounded. At the same time, unveil anxiety, disapproval, defensiveness, and the need to feel secure. The yellow background bleeds happiness, creativity, optimism, dyed with deceit, caution, to ailment. These very emotions and mechanisms are emblematic of not only what the album engulfs but also JLG’s boon in artistry- giving listeners the ugly truth about life through personal reflections and self-discovery.

Listeners embark on a journey with JLG. “The Pact (They Said)” may be revered but songs like “Walk With Me” and “Sunday Dinners” are the ultimate! The artist precociously deludes listeners in “Walk With Me,” whose introduction dovetails gospel and house music only to later code switch to rap contour. To saunter with him is like trudging on water (by faith, not by sight to living honorably) at the same time on fragments of broken glass leaving the feet to bleed from acute cuts. The lyrics, “Talking to people that mean no good/Eating foods that’s bad for my health” along with other lyrics in song exemplifies his humanity, confliction, to liminality between healing from brokenness to experiencing revivification. And to experience his
renaissance, it will require him to ferret out therapy as opposed to coping with substance abuse that could lead to his demise.

Do listeners recall basking in their youthful glory when playing with friends/cousins outside as the norm before video game systems, tablets, and cell phones became a household staple of entertainment? What about exciting walks to the corner store to buy inexpensive candy and bags of chips? This is what JLG’s grief-stricken “Sunday Dinners” evokes by taking it back to memory lane. It expounds the valuing of family gatherings on the Sabbath eating the best of the matriarch’s home cook meals, suggesting Sundays are therapeutic for him just as for Black people.

What is loved about the spontaneous “Sunday Dinners” is JLG’s rapid flow and delivery in the second verse redolent of Eminem and JID of Dreamville- criterion he mourns the passing of his ancestors, to preferably consuming home cooked meals. Yet, his correlation of homemade foods to microwave dinners is genius. The lyrics, “Microwave music, microwave flows/ Microwave
fashion, microwave clothes/ Microwave friendships and microwave hoes/ Microwave rappers and microwave souls” signify convenience, superficial, health risks, poor tastes in texture to unevenness. This is where charlatan, cheap, and flimsy over organic, authenticity, and community is becoming the new standard in society.

The three track EP is delivered strategically. Attention spans are becoming shorter, but the messages in songs are of exactness. A grand statement is made with the little he gave as an artist. Jay Lyn Gatz is this new generation’s promise that noteworthy artists of his stature still exist.

Written By: Hector De La Rosa
Twitter: Here_2_Edutain_
IG: unleashing_my_inner_illmatic