J Roy Champion – “Hawaiian Shirts & Work”

After 6 years as a solo artist, it appears that J Roy Champion has found his lane. “Hawaiian Shirts & Work” is his first solo retail effort, and proves to be a solid one, having released all but one song as a single.

He opened his campaign with the trap anthem “Sae Deez” which served as a cuffing season disclaimer. While trap isn’t usually his go-to style, he appeared to own it while remaining true to his own character. He followed up with the official visuals for his second and third singles, “Witness” and “Nazareth”. “Witness” serves as the period on the end of that trap sentence he wrote with the first record. “Nazareth”, however is more of his cup of tea, giving off more of a classic Hip-Hop feel. We imagine that this is why he chose this record to be the project opener.

The title track “Hawaiian Shirts” initially feels like more of a filler, a rather entertaining one at that. About three quarters into the track is where the treat comes into play…a complete change up. The ending, which we appropriately named “Number One” is everything the project needed, so much so that we wish it was it’s own track. J Roy then piggy backs off of this with the perfect posse cut featuring 5 other MC’s from Boston, “Ashes”. The 6 cut EP, concludes with the most powerful song of the project, and the only one that has not been released on its own. On “Never”, Champ tackles the art of story telling, in a tale of the fall of a hustler by way of a greedy woman. Listening to this song has a movie-like affect on the listener as it is packed with sounds and ad-libs that put you in that moment, much like a movie score.

It has to be difficult to make an impression in such a short time frame. How do you pick the right combination of songs for such a short project? 6 songs from J Roy was enough to generate interest, but not enough to make the listener fall in love. But we want to fall in love. We want more from J Roy Champion. Purchase “HSXW” on all digital retailers (iTunes, Rhapsody, Spinlet, Google Play, Spotify, Xbox Music, Amazon and more…)

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