High-profile partnerships alongside Rich the Kid and PnB Rock introduced New York rapper Jay Critch’s Auto-Tuned flows and charismatic East Coast pop-trap approach to broader listeners. Critch started composing rhymes during elementary years and shifted to full-time music-making before turning twenty, concentrating exclusively on standalone tracks and remixes during his initial professional phase. Only later did he move into mixtape territory, issuing a sequence of releases that included 2018’s Hood Favorite and 2021’s Critch Tape.
Born in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hills section in 1997, Critch began uploading his raw, trap-tinged, occasionally lo-fi recordings to the internet in 2016 while still in his late teens. Breakthrough arrived via “Did It Again,” first issued in 2016 and then updated in early 2017 with guest verses from newly acquired supporter Rich the Kid; the track spread rapidly, its video accumulating more than a million views within its opening week online. That same year Critch joined Rich the Kid’s Rich Forever imprint and appeared on every cut of the label’s showcase project Rich Forever 3, while also issuing the collaborative single “Okay Fine” with PnB Rock, which drew millions of streams.
His visibility grew through consistent drops of individual tracks and visuals, among them the widely circulated “Fashion” and “Thousand Ways.” The twelve-track debut project Hood Favorite surfaced in 2018 and spotlighted the single “Ego” plus appearances from Offset, Fabolous, and French Montana. The following year Critch joined Rich Forever 4 alongside Famous Dex and Bino. Signed with Love, a solo mixtape, arrived in 2020, followed in 2021 by the expansive Critch Tape featuring Drakeo the Ruler, Lil Tjay, and additional guests. In 2022 Critch paired with producer Harry Fraud for the single “Born with It.”
