Indonesian rapper and producer Ramengvrl makes entice music with a twist. Her skeletal beats really feel alive, one way or the other: squishing, chiming, and bouncing round, as her staccato rhymes seize at them. Her debut 10-track mixtape, ‘no bethany’, exhibits off her knack for playfulness, at turns goofy and severe in the identical 16 bars.
Ramengvrl’s hooks are catchy, however she’s stone-cold severe with them, too: utilizing her lyrics to problem the established order and take photographs at a patriarchal, sexist music business. In nations like Indonesia, musicians can simply go worldwide by crafting formulaic pop songs sung in English. For Ramengvrl, it comes from a postcolonial mentality that influences what’s thought of needed to be able to break into the US and European industries. She needs to see that change.
“I really feel like a number of rappers within the scene are too targeted on what’s taking place on the market, with Migos, Travis Scott, Playboi Carti,” she tells DJ Magazine. “A whole lot of us try to repeat that, and it’s not straightforward to get out of that tendency as a result of they’re blowin’ up in all places.” Although she could also be one of many nation’s rising stars, and a singular reference level on the subject of South-East Asian rap, she doesn’t wish to be pigeonholed.
“I really feel like every one in every of us is collectively making an attempt to make it on the market… to point out the world outdoors Asia that we’re dope too!” she says. “It’s not straightforward for Asian rappers to ‘make it’, particularly in Indonesia, the place hip-hop tradition remains to be in its untimely state. Slowly however certainly, I wanna show that I could make it whereas — alongside different dope rappers within the area — shifting the eye to Asia extra. It simply so occurs that I’m a feminine, too, so the significance is amplified. Even now, I really feel like hip-hop itself is shifting increasingly to Asia. It’s time.”