Dan Tha Jeweler released his first official album “Blessed” on July 29 which is available on all streaming services. Dan came back to the music scene last year changing his name from YOMP, which was his childhood nickname, to Dan Tha Jeweler. “I have played around with music for most of my life,” says Dan Tha Jeweler. “I started when I was nine years old by singing over popular songs terribly off tune, high-pitched, and with a speech impediment. It was awful, but I enjoyed doing it. I got into the production aspect and by the time I was 18, I was producing music with my friends, and that’s how I got into the music scene.”
Dan Tha Jeweler also clearly states that his genre is not hip-hop, but more appropriately rap, though he does have some triphop elements in his music. “Blessed” features what may be the most consistent usage of Dan Tha Jeweler’s gift with melody, the spoken word and gentle soundscapes.
These tracks showcase his ability to infect listeners’ ears with his sweet, sophisticated hooks, drowned in almost ambient soundscapes. Through all of that he still also manages to switch up his underwhelming flow, going from deep brooding spoken word passages to melodically flowing, almost sing-song interludes.
Dan Tha Jeweler’s output, especially what he’s released here seems to be laced with a feeling of melancholy, though that may mostly be due to his subdued rapping scheme. However he captures that feeling more than just about anything else on “Blessed”.
Again, this might just be my perception, as I often got so lost in the hypnotic soundscapes and Dan Tha Jeweler’s mesmerizing slow-burn rhyming that I totally forgot to follow the lyrics.
Even when he raps through the track called “Mr. Happy”, I felt a streak of brooding bleakness. Not everything on “Blessed” feels quite so bleak though; Dan Tha Jeweler still knows how to craft a sense of urgency into all of his calm, relaxed smoothness, and you can find it precisely on “Pay The Toll ft. diligentHITMAN” and “Fly Away ft. Cypher”. Everything here seems more densely driven and electrifyingly atmospheric.
The highlights on “Blessed” come with the tracks, “Day One Ft. Faraday Fontimus”, “Stay”, “Made”, “My All” and “Everything Eternal ft. Rexx”. The rhymer’s music sounds like it is out of this world on these tracks – from the raps, straight to the beat production. His otherworldly nature is defined by the spacey, evocative ambience used in his songs, and the fact that he is experimenting with his sound in ways many traditional rappers would even dream of.
“Blessed”, as an album, is more steeped in deep emotion, than it is in sheer technique when it comes to rapping, and considering today’s shallow trends in the genre, not only is that, not a bad thing at all. It’s probably, the best thing any rapper can do, to distinguish himself from the crowd.
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