J.I.D made his Tiny Desk Concert debut for NPR this week, where the Dreamville rapper weaved his way through a seven-song medley spanning his entire discography.
With an entire band squeezed into the tight venue space, the East Atlanta resident kicked his performance off on Thursday (September 8) with “Galaxy,” taken from his new album The Forever Story, before jumping to DiCaprio 2‘s “Workin Out” and “Off da Zoinkys.”
AD LOADING...
The former football player then time-traveled to a song he believes is very important to the J.I.D eco-system with The Never Story‘s “Never.”
He finished off his set with another pair of standout tracks from his 2022 album The Forever Story, performing a stripped-down version of “Surround Sound” and the family-rooted “Kody Blu 31.”
J.I.D even made sure to “cut the Usher tension” with his best dance move mimicking the R&B legend from his viral Tiny Desk in June.
“I’m doing a little bit more singing on here so I’m asking you to bear with me, but if I don’t, then everybody’s nipples in here gonna get real hard because it’s gonna be really great,” he joked prior to the last song.
JID Almost Joined Quality Control Before J. Cole’s Dreamville: 'I Was About To Be The Fourth Migo'
In a recent interview with Apple Music, J.I.D revealed that he sampled audio from his grandmother’s funeral for the opening 20 seconds of “Kody Blu 31.”
“I have the actual footage,” he told Ebro Darden. “I’m sitting there crying, holding the phone, recording this, because I know it’s a big moment. A couple years before that, we lost my other grandma on my mother’s side. This is my dad’s mother we lost. Recording this, my dad is singing his heart out on this recording.”
AD LOADING...
He continued: “At the beginning of the song, if you listen to it, the first 15, 20 seconds, you could hear my whole family singing. You could hear my momma say, ‘Thank you, Lord.’ It’s super powerful, and it’s just literally about keep pushing through. The song is saying, ‘Swing on, swing on.’ It’s a choir-type feel. My family is all over the album.”
The Forever Story debuted at No. 12 on the Billboard 200 with just under 31,000 total album-equivalent units sold. As for what’s next on the music side, J.I.D has his sights set on DiCaprio 3, which will be a Gangsta Grillz mixtape helmed by DJ Drama.
