Curbside Jones is an artist from Austin who has been releasing music for about the last five years. His most recent project came in April of 2021, when he paired up with Dexter Fizz to release Last Train, inspired by their tour experience in Japan. Now he’s back with a different sort of project, Jigga With the Grill.

Jigga With the Grill is an interesting project in a few different ways. First, Jones is working with the inspiration of New York in the late ‘90s to early ‘00s, from the fashion to the romanticized idea of gatekeeping radio shows like Stretch and Bobbito, where legendary freestyle battles could make or break an artist. Where this project takes a turn is the way in which this inspiration plays out. With seven tracks all on the shorter side, Jigga With a Grill plays more like an old school mixtape, with left field beats turning on a dime and emcees spitting hard without worrying about a hook or anything else. Production duties are also handled by Jones, along with beats from DøøF, Phill Blanks, Flat Stanley, and Dhrma. When you put all of these beats together, with their grimy, lo-fi feel and the way things are constantly shifting, the project feels like more of a commentary on the split that was happening in NYC and elsewhere at the time, where the Diddy-fication of pop rap went strong in one direction, and the weirder artists split off and went underground. Now you add in the different styles and voices that Jones is doing on the mic and bringing in guests like HPBLK, Levi Watson, Dexter Fizz, KAKKY, and the project starts leaning in a sort of Madlib/Kool Keith direction. This is all to say that this is weird and wonderful and creative, but by the time you get to the end of the seventh track, we’ve traveled quite a bit away from Jay-Z.

Jigga With the Grill is an unusual project in 2022, but for those that dig those mixtapes and compilations from the late ‘90s and early ‘00s where artist could just go in and get weird and rap their asses off for a minute and then bounce, this is for you.