Alex Jones, aka DJ Swole, is a young artist that’s rising in the Birmingham hip hop scene. Fortunately, he got hooked into the RDFND crew and K1NG ELJAY has teamed up with him to work on this EP to mark the occasion of his college graduation. Appropriately enough, they’ve decided to call it Graduation EP.

The EP opens with a spoken word piece from DJ Swole titled “The Pen,” which puts Swole’s words right up front as he muses about the power of the word in 2018. It’s a thoughtful and powerful rumination that then leads into some excellent hip hop. K1NG ELJAY produces the majority of the tracks, bringing in a nice mix of soulful boom bap with little bit of Southern trap influence. J-Ideas lends his talents to one track, but it blends in so nicely, you’d never notice someone else stepped in. This sets the stage nicely for Swole, who delivers some really thoughtful and honest lyricism at a really conversational pace over the course of a handful of songs. He touches on religion, breakups, hip hop, and just his struggle to find his way and figure out who he is and what he wants out of life, all done in this really candid fashion that allows you to form a connection with him as an emcee with even just this short glimpse into what he can do. On top of all that, we also get K1NG ELJAY to hop on the mic for the song “Kinda,” which amongst other things allows you to see why these two artists connected in the first place, as ELJAY has a similar flow and presence on the mic, he just has the benefit of being a little bit older and further into his career. It all comes together for a really solid EP.

K1NG ELJAY clearly knew there was something worth exploring with DJ Swole to make an EP with him, and now that Graduation is here, you can see what it is. This young man is really contemplative emcee, and he’s taken a lot of care to put himself into the music, the good, the bad, and the ugly as he figures out who he is as a young man and an artist. I can’t wait to see him grow from here.