lilyy - admire

I think there’s something to taking the same sound and stylings of a specific subgenre and filtering it through even more subgenres - whatever music comes out of that is unique and and often incomparable. I feel like lilyy’s done that on a project like this, taking the melodies and emotions of “soulhop” (or whatever tf you want to call it) and structuring it in a way that feels like vocally-driven house or future funk. This may not present itself so much through the chops as much as the drums, where in a style so typically categorised as loose, every scattered hihat and sporadic snare seems to fall perfectly on the grid, taking the missing quantization from so much of instrumental hiphop and flipping it on its head so everything aligns right on beat. Paired up against such an array of sample material it ends up being a really interesting blend, between the sweet woodwinds of the intro to the aggressive freakout of ‘GAME OVER.’ It covers an amazing amount of ground across such a brief runtime, but flows impeccably between the hard transitions through each track. I think I just love that lilyy really stuck to her own devices on a tape like this, because even if the samples and drum sounds might replicate any other tape in this style, it’s how she’s laid it all out that makes it different. Banging and beautiful, this tape feels really distinct, and all the more memorable for it.

KEY BEAT: v2 - really hard to pass this one up from the gorgeous shimmering vocals and keys alone, triplets of snares and odd hits of hihats giving way to claps on the one and three midway through the track, giving it a more house-y touch.