J’can hip-hop act collabs with French beatmaker

Jamaican hip-hop artiste Five Steez has teamed up with French beatmaker J-Zen for the new fourtrack EP, ‘Pantone’.

Pantone opens with the track Spesh FX, featuring Nomad Carlos, a fellow MC of Five Steez in the four-member collective The Council.

What’s Your Vibe? and No Debate follow. The final song, We Can Never Know, explores life’s uncertainty, with Five Steez opening up in his first verse about friend and collaborator France Nooks, who passed in February 2018.

“J-Zen and I did these songs between late 2017 and early 2018,” said Five Steez. “Now, our schedules have given us the time to wrap things up and share it with the world. I’m excited about this project because it’s the same true-school, boom-bap, hip-hop people know me for. But it’s a very different groove, sound and texture from anything I’ve ever released.”

J-Zen said he has been following Five Steez for a while and had heard his EP HeatRockz with fellow Council member Mordecai.

“I knew he was an artiste I wanted to work with, so I reached out and we made it happen. I’m proud to now present Pantone to the people, and I hope they enjoy the music as much as we enjoyed making it,” he said.

Pantone is the second release in 2019 from Five Steez, who dropped the album Love N Art with Mordecai in February. The EP is the first release from J-Zen since the June 2018 beat tape Agave.

Five Steez made his debut with his 2012 album War for Peace, following up with 2014’s EP, These Kingston Times. HeatRockz was released in 2016, and, in 2017, he featured heavily on The Council’s album Nothing Else Matters.

J-Zen, who is signed to French independent label Dooinit Music, made his debut on the beatmaking scene with his first beat tape, Breakfast, in 2009, and became more known to the public with 2010’s Guilty Pleasure.