The One Who Knocks is not rapper J Wade and producer Jordan "Cloud Boy" Patterson's first record together, but it does feel ostentatious in the fashion that a debut would. I think an examination of the declaratory nature of the album, the way it muscles its way into your life, can start with the album's name. The One Who Knocks is a Breaking Bad reference, but it doesn't feel derivative or even reflective of the themes of the prestige television drama that inspired it. Instead, the phrase acts as a mirror for the collaborators and their performances. Many of these tracks were written in 2018 when J was binging the Bryan Cranston vehicle and dealing with a crisis over the fact that his dedication to his work had caused his girlfriend to dump him. It's a strange space to find yourself in; where you are working towards your dream but realizing that the cloud you are riding on is smothering everyone else below you. I think this epiphany has a lot to do with how J's vocals eventually ended up coming across on this album ie no-none-sense, none-what-so-ever.
J baritone flow on The One Who Knocks is of the no-frills school of "say it and let it weigh on their minds" that denotes a priority for the substance over style, and content as a measure of caliber, that will leave you digging for the next level of meaning in each verse for days. It's a very under-the-radar but spirit-rich style that feels almost overly direct at first, but this bluntness is what gives it its character and rhythmic cadence. It's a trustworthy manner of dropping bars- dependable and one-point. Especially when J is unreserved about how his drive and work ethic and how they have interfered with his personal relationships, you get the sense that his performance is as honest as they come.
Then there are Cloud Boy's beats, which have so much flair that they almost make me light-headed. He has a real love of pitched down and goopy remixes of soul samples (don't we all!) but he places a special emphasis on the emotional peak of these charged vocal hooks, which he then cycles and sequences as if they were the only vocals on the track. There is probably a manual out there for rap production that instructs its students that, under no circumstances, shall they do what Cloud Boys has does on The One Who Knocks. But if any of these impressionable padawans were to take that advice, they'd never be able to make an album as tonally and melodically dynamic as this one. Cloud Boys is self-taught and his drive is self-sustaining, and if he has a use for a manual, it's probably to even out a wobbly table somewhere. This is how you ended up essentially having two top-line melodies for each track on this album. Both are perfectly perpendicular and yet in harmonious synchronization.
Cloud Boy will clip and rotate a plangent vocal swell in sustained climax and J will then proceed to rock the open beats of each measure and gaps in the breath of the sampled singer like they were spacious enough to rent a studio apartment wherein he can paint you a picture with his mind. I say "as if," but that's precisely what he does. It's amazing how both J and Cloud Boy's talents can be displayed side-by-side, breathing the same breath of air and not trip and stumbling over each other, or crumbling into a shoving match. They are close enough to be siblings here, and when one takes a step with their right foot, the other steps forward with his left, as they face each other in an interpretative whirl of rhythm, and sound.
This is all probably possible only because Cloud Boy's mixes are so hot, and J's flow is so cool and collected, but it's no less impressive even if you can break it down into its elements like a mathematical equation. It all adds up though to make an album whose energy and presence are effortless and unreproducible by anyone else. An album possessed of a centripetal force that should fling its collaborators to the wind but instead holds them in an unremitting orbit of esteem and fellowship. The One Who Knocks is a bold title of an album full of forward-facing and unapologetic music about living with ambition, but not allowing your ambition to rule your life. So if you hear a knock, answer- because an experience like this only comes once in a lifetime.
