Topaz Jones - Arcade

Pitchfork 72

At first, Topaz Jones sounds like the sort of young, positive-thinking emcee who should pay tithes to Chance the Rapper on an annual basis. But repeated listens to the 23-year-old New York rapper’s Arcade reveal the intricacy and subtleties of Jones—he’s not the earnest pup sniffing around your ankles, but a fully formed personality, an approachable everyman rapper who’s more Oddisee and Open Mike Eagle than Vic Mensa.

Jones’ persona is enriched by a deep love of old funk and soul music (his father Curtis played guitar for the influential band Slave), and he frequently uses live instrumentation. “Grass (Survivor’s Guilt)” transitions from light adult-contemporary guitar to thudding boom-bap, mashing together conflicting thoughts in the same way Jones weaves a love song into a thought about romance as a “great distraction from checking the evening news and staying up on what’s happening.”

“Tropicana” occupies the same fleet-footed space as other intoxicating, breezy singles from this year, like Joey Purp’s “Girls @” and Amine’s “Caroline.” But Jones manages to weave details and asides in the lyrics that require repeated, close listens (it also proves he’s more than capable of double-time raps and old-school flows). “He killing but you still say, ‘free my bro,’ truth be told he should do his time/but hey that’s another song,” he offers casually, hinting at a larger world than he has time to get to inside a two-and-a-half minute toe-tapper. It’s a reminder of the potency that a flighty, sub-three minute rap song can contain, and the depths rap often plunders through beats that fill floors with joyous dancing bodies.

Jones is also an excellent hook writer, transforming the fantasy of the funky “Powerball” with a gospel-hued, reality-crashing bridge of: “What’s going on/nothing but the rent, nothing but the rent, nothing but the rent.” The song's cheeky “what if I won the lottery” concept is fleshed out by his chuckling reminiscence: “I graduated all they gave me was a piece of paper/no ‘good job’/no goodbye/not even ‘see you later.’” The humanity of the moment is telling: How else could you expect to “move up” in life without the aide of the lotto, while dealing with the quotidian reality that education rarely provides a pragmatic leg-up?)

The piano ballad “Untitled” showcases his soulful voice, framing the song as a declaration to his mother he’s moving out while sneaking a tender autobiography. He calls back to this “hidden track” a few songs later, trading the piano for guitar (again, no drums) and offering a few more personal details: “My prom date just got engaged, I’m happy for you Marissa/that night in June I was probably just too nervous to kiss you,” he sighs, seconds after noting the colors of his childhood home were painted as the house gets put on the market. These moments are affecting because they are the work of an empathetic writer—he gives everyone in his stories autonomy: Jones has searched himself for the story and held onto the moments he thinks matter, not merely assumed he is the story. With Arcade, he makes you a part of the story, too.