Frank Ocean has had all the Prince comparisons this year, but this guy here is the F!cking second coming! I've had this song on repeat ever since I stumbled upon it. It's a miracle. This should've been all over the place!

10. Jai Paul: "Jasmine" [XL]

While the rest of the music world seems to run at the speed of light, Jai Paul moves at his own pace. "Jasmine" is only his second official single after 2010's "BTSTU", which means he knocks out one classic every other year. The paucity of material has created a fervor: There's a 50 page (!) thread over on this Kanye West forum, where users have traded everything from information on where members of Jai's family work, to a community-curated EP of demos. Even with his limited amount of material, Jai has managed to craft his own language: the combination of quick cuts of silence, gurgling synths, and wah-wah guitar doesn't sound like anything else in music at the moment. In the middle is Paul's feather-soft falsetto, sounding distant as ever, yet grounding things in reality. It's impressive just how distinctly Jai Paul this song is, given that we haven't got much to go on so far.

His disorientating universe hints at deeper trough of material too; it's difficult to imagine that he's arrived at such a spectral place on a first (or second) attempt. "Jasmine" itself suggests something to be discovered, its pleas half-sunk beneath a slowly encroaching funk that finds space between Daft Punk and Dilla. Like "BTSTU", the track is custom made for infinite listens-- its undulations lining up with some ineffable sense of human rhythm-- which, considering his careful rate of productivity, is not only good but necessary. --Hari Ashurst

Pitchfork.com's Top 100 Singles of the Year 2012

[Edited 3/1/13 16:37pm]

Jai Paul needs to put out an album. I discovered "BTSTU" while watching HBO 24/7 back in 2011. Thereafter, I discovered "Jasmine" . Those songs typically make it into my daily song rotation.

love this! never heard of him b4

i don't think that kind of majority crowd lives here

I love this.

I wonder if that bass playing is sampled or original though?

ummm, very mediocre and underwhelming given the written hype. dude has potential, but nothing to write home about...yet

This is something to have in the car for me. You get to spend a different kind of time with it and bath in it. I liked it. Now if my vehicle's sound system was a little more sophisticated it would be on.

I'm all for trying out new approaches, but this came off as a bit too gimmicky as the song itself was quite weak. The vocal delivery lacked energy and I assume the vocals were placed so low in the mix because of that or because of sound quality issues ("bedroom recording"). The recording also misses a proper sentiment of space, which seems to be the main fault with a lot of this "pitchfork approven" indie soul stuff that has started to surface recently.

In other words, I didn't like it.

The music is ok, but why is this dude singing (or whatever the hell that is) like Janet Jackson?

No disrespect but I was doing better before I heard thi stuff.

I can't hear shit of what that dude is saying. It makes me very sad.

This is some interesting shit, that is suffering from a bad mix.

He needs to invest in getting this song mixed by someone who knows what the hell he/she's doin!