“I started making music as a form of therapy. For fun ya know? I never planned on this.”

 

Such humble words have become expected from the Nashville underground whose hip-hop scene is a form of jealousy-inducing inspiration for so many other small rap markets around the world. And from JORDAN Xx, a sound so defined by comfortability and mellowness even while spitting frigid bars, is not what’s expect from an artist who was ever looking for creative therapy in the first place. It must be working. 

 

And it’s working at a more prominent scale than simply JORDAN Xx’s delivery. Take his latest project, Friday Special, and bathe in the juxtaposition between what you’re hearing and what you’re listening to. A young rapper marked by a brash vocabulary, a playful edge, and a sharp, cunning coalescence of his sound, his meaning, and the lo-fi beats he and the rest of Nashville have become known for, JORDAN Xx is a volatile lyricist with a one-of-a-kind sound. And Friday Special is surely just a taste – albeit an 8-minute ride of rap quite unlike anything to come before it – of what else is to come.