Emma DJ

Emma DJ

g0drm2

UIQ

Pillar of the Parisian scene, Emma DJ presents a second album/mixtape for Lee Gamble’s UIQ label, a 28-track reading of Tik Tok-ready rap featuring a brace of naif melodies embellished with emosh autotune and starring Rainy Miller, Shyweek, Simo Cell, Tmongo, Torus, Yves Ciroc, Cambyse, Cxoxc, Elliotrdv, Eugène Blove, Low Jack, Nonoekichii and more. Back in rap mode after a bout of industrialised grime with L.I.E.S., the prolific producer doubles down on the ‘Godrime’ mixtape for UIQ with a new 72 minute set of acrid, syrupy wooze and strung-out emoting carried by puckered hooks and abundance of gobs on each cut. It’s the sound of smoked-out Parisian bedrooms and backseats, smudging the face of mimetic pop-rap into subtly distorted gurns with a contemporariness reflecting mutant rap’s modern hyper-reality. Like its predecessor, it avoids the concréte clatter of Emma DJ's L.I.E.S. material and instead focuses on airy, inebriated radio trap - the kind of dilated post-sample culture synthetika that lashes Drain Gang with Lil Uzi Vert and Metro Boomin with PNL. Glued together haphazardly but sculpturally, the tape sounds like a heavily stepped-on snowball of the last decade of post-DatPiff iPhone rap, all emosh supersaws, clipped chop snares and downcast AutoTurnt mumbles. Emma DJ holds it together because he balances a passion for the spidery tendrils of localised rap with a robust connection to the Parisian scene; each additional voice helps him assemble a pixelated picture of inebriated DIY shows, low-NRG afters' and stagger'd walks home thru neon-lit Parisian side streets....