Before digging into the latest leak by Jay Electronica, I’m compelled to point to his leak from last month. Sure, thirty days isn’t much time between leaked hip-hop, but if you’d heard this guy, you’d be eager for more on a monthly basis, too.

This New Orleans MC (Third Ward, if you’re asking), allied with Erykah Badu’s Control FreaQ Records, released perhaps the most striking nine minutes of hip-hop of the year at his MySpace page in July. If you grab the MP3, feel free to skip past the first six and a half minutes of praise from Badu and producer Just Blaze to get to what they’re gushing about: four tracks, all sans percussion, of Jay’s verbal assault, peppered with the score of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and quotes from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Though the general tone is weird as hell, it’s the delivery that’s most refreshing. Jay’s subdued, rapid-fire mumble rises above the no-drums novelty: “I told her that being an immortal is the portal to the true nature of both the Christ and the Buddha, man / That’s why I never spit the traditional garbage of a knife-light, bright-lights, white-ice to the fans.”

But J-E’s not aiming to be an avant-rapper if his latest leak, the Style Wars EP, is any indication. On these five tracks, he’s bolder and louder to rise above his production, coming off like Kool Keith through a wringer of sandpaper. But just like his last release, there’s little here to box the guy within the pigeonholed Dirty South sound, and in opening track “Renaissance Man,” he’s happy to bust up industry expectations about his home: “These nerds at record labels played me dumb & dumber / so I showed the industry my ass crack like a plumber / now ASCAP bangin’ on my door like a drummer.”

In only five tracks, Jay proves himself capable of adapting to most any production style, from the melodic, East Coast-friendly beat by J. Dilla on “So What You Sayin’” to the more intense, military stomp of “Be Easy”—“Made moves like Kasparov / My sins like snakeskins, homie I cast ‘em off.” Information is pretty scarce on the guy, though links to the leaked songs aren’t, so assume that the dude’s sticking to a schedule and keep your eyes open for more in…September.