Ten years in the past, Nicki Minaj ousted a journalist from her lodge room. “Don’t communicate to me like I’m silly or beneath you in any method,” she mentioned. The Pinkprint, her 2014 opus, so boldly echoed this command that it felt autocratic: a vengeful monarch punishing the serfs and peasants who dared disrespect her crown. Enter skaiwater, a masochistic yearner whose personal pinkPrint EPs commerce despotism for delirium. The UK-born crooner grew up on swag-era saviors, the Nickis and Kanyes and Drakes who soundtracked a weightless, optimistic cultural second. As that optimism has devolved—who doesn’t really feel manic in America?—the hedonistic highs of final decade have given method to deeper, darker lows. Terror bass tortures speaker methods; darkish plugg attracts out demons; rage music reigns over angsty teenagers. When this technology will get a pinkPrint, it’s a frenetic fever dream consistently threatening to combust.
skaiwater’s eclectic output—a gushy hybrid of Jersey Membership, pop-punk, and post-Complete Lotta Purple rage—paints a vivid portrait of a coronary heart on fireplace. Initially launched on her alt SoundCloud account in February and April, pinkPrints 1 and a pair of are, as ever, frothing with want. However this want by no means feels depressive, which is a testomony to how enjoyable, even when fierce, these EPs make apoplectic lust really feel. Totally self-produced and spiritually indebted to the 2010s, their uncleared samples and “Entice-A-Holics!” tags don’t solely summon the swag period however subvert it, grafting its weightlessness onto rawer, extra visceral realities. A longing Rihanna guarantees to “Kiss It Higher”; a lovesick skaiwater would quite their ex kiss their ass. The Tumblr-tinted backdrop displays not solely misplaced love, but additionally a misplaced time.
Manufacturing is continually the distinction between progress and pastiche. Take the pulsating “sweet,” a shape-shifting squall that turns Mk.gee’s “Sweet” right into a membership banger, then turns that right into a rage remix of PARTYNEXTDOOR’s “Acknowledge.” A standout of the sparse pinkPrint 1, it thrives on bug-eyed mischief: reworking, then transcending touchstones that appear too sacred to be tinkered with. On “use me,” skaiwater constructs a Rolling Loud-ready lure stomper from the bones of a Sabrina Carpenter tune. It’s so zany that it’s type of cathartic. Much less so is “we didn’t get the memo,” which forges a jerk beat from “Second 4 Life,” solely to drag-and-drop Drake’s complete verse on the finish. It’s a uncommon miss: More often than not, the samples are so well-placed that they might move for options. It appears like watching somebody play MyTeam with the previous 15 years of music.
This impact is perfected on pinkPrint 2, an ingenious sequel that doubles its counterpart in measurement and scope. The swag period as soon as once more joins us by way of pattern—Frank Ocean, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj—however skaiwater additionally remixes melodic friends, wailing her personal love songs over those in her playlist. A Beabadoobee ballad mutates right into a bit-crushed, shit-talking rage thumper (“allah”); PinkPantheress fights for her life over blasts of gut-rearranging low finish on a searing membership anthem (“cashapp”). It appears like a DJ set hosted by baby-voice Playboi Carti in whichever circle of Hell tdf buys his distortion pedals. And it feels, additionally, vaguely acquainted: We’ve all considered a tune, saved occupied with it, began questioning what it’d sound like with a kick, or a chord change, or the topline of another tune, or a special visitor verse. The pinkPrint EPs aren’t any totally different, which is what makes their delirium so rewarding. Someplace behind skaiwater the cracked producer, you’ll be able to all the time make out skaiwater the fan.
