In 2012, he released a new demo, Jasmine, another dark and disorientating piece of production softened by a funky guitar, Paul’s gossamer vocals and moving, simple lyrics of first love and heartbreak: “When I see you, Jasmine/ What’s a boy to do?/ Please come back to me/ Make my dream come true”.īut by 2013, Jai Paul had quit music. But not much was known about the 22-year-old producer beyond his MySpace page, which suggested he was British-Indian, and lived in Rayners Lane, Harrow. Picked up by Zane Lowe on Radio1, the demo was an instant success, and by 2011 Jai Paul had signed to XL Recordings – home to Adele – while BTSTU had been sampled by Drake and Beyoncé.

On Reddit, Jai Paul superfans described it as a “spiritual awakening”. It was as if a shy Prince, in another life, had found his calling making futuristic bedroom beats. It sounded like nothing else: fusing the soft soul of R’n’B with the brutalism of electronic music, it featured a feathery falsetto backed by a heavily distorted bass synth and a hypnotic, woozy beat with lyrics that swung from the violent to poetic: “Don’t f- with me, don’t f- with me/ Since you shipped my ass off to sea”…“The ship was the love of my life/ We went down together that night”. The gig was as unexpected as his viral success back in 2010, when BTSTU surfaced as an unfinished demo on the blogosphere.

Raising his arms to the sky as a crowd who had waited 12 years to see him perform live bellowed the lyrics to his breakout 2011 song BTSTU, Jai Paul – the UK’s most enigmatic musician – was a surreal vision on stage on Wednesday night at HERE at the Outernet in central London.

Last night in the telegraph club