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The Guardian
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I've long struggled with my identity in pop': Ethel Cain on fandom, first loves, and being inspired by David Lynch
Something strange happened to Hayden Anhedönia in January. The 27-year-old artist known professionally as Ethel Cain was finishing off her upcoming album Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You when she had to go to court. 'I got into some traffic trouble,' she says coyly in her soft southern lilt. The plan was to drive from the courthouse in her home city of Tallahassee, Florida, to Toronto to wrap the album with her longtime collaborator Matthew Tomasi. 'Listen,' she continues, leaning forward into her webcam – a glint behind the eyes, conspiratorial tone in the voice. 'I don't know what happened in that courthouse, but I walked out of there having been put on probation. I couldn't go to Canada. I couldn't go anywhere.' As a result, Tomasi flew down to Tallahassee. They holed up in Anhedönia's tiny home studio and didn't leave until it was done. When they weren't working, they watched Twin Peaks for the first time. 'Every day it was wake up, work, Twin Peaks, work, Twin Peaks, work …' They binged the whole thing in two weeks. Anhedönia even hunted down the synths that composer Angelo Badalamenti used on the soundtrack and sprinkled them on a few of her own tracks. One night they finished working, watched the final episode, and went to bed. She woke up to the news that David Lynch had passed away. 'I was really happy that I finished the show while he was still alive,' she says. The synths 'felt kind of like an homage. A way to keep David and Angelo and Laura [Palmer] alive in some small way.' Lynch's work stages epic battles between darkness and light, pitting the purity of the individual against the corruption of the world; small-town life versus primordial forces of evil. The same battle plays out on Willoughby Tucker, which tells the story of what Anhedönia describes as 'a deeply traumatised love story between two kids who are in love, but the world weighs on them'. It's also present in her debut album, 2022's Preacher's Daughter, a southern gothic tale of a teenage girl named Ethel Cain who flees the confines of her religious upbringing only to be murdered and cannibalised by her boyfriend. The grisly subject matter made for unlikely breakthrough material, but Preacher's Daughter ended up becoming one of 2022's most critically lauded pop breakouts. In the space of a few months, Anhedönia jumped from collaborating with niche SoundCloud rappers to being featured in Forbes' 30 Under 30 and fronting campaigns for Givenchy, Marc Jacobs and Miu Miu. When Preacher's Daughter was rereleased on vinyl this April, it broke into the Top 10 in the UK, Australia, the Netherlands and the US, where Anhedönia made history as the first publicly trans musician to reach the Top 10 of the Billboard albums chart. As far as ascents to fame go, Anhedönia's was a baptism of fire. She has attracted the kind of invasive, obsessive fandom typically reserved for A-list pop stars. Owing to her sharp cultural commentary and eviscerating political takes – in a viral post after Trump's election, she wrote 'If you voted for Trump, I hope that peace never finds you' – her social media accounts are routinely trawled for 'problematic' content, and her criticism of the US healthcare system has been discussed on Fox News. Speaking to the Guardian in July 2023, Anhedönia expressed a desire 'to have a much smaller fanbase'. 'I've long struggled with my identity in pop,' she reasons now. 'I love pop music, but my issue for a while was the way fandoms operate.' Having seen the violence and trauma of Preacher's Daughter spun into flippant memes, she had feared that any future release would be similarly received. 'I've since made my peace with that. At the end of the day, you make what you make and you put it out and people can do what they want with it.' A recent firestorm over screenshots of things posted when she was 19, however, shows how merciless the spotlight can be. A slew of comments, including the use of racial slurs and rape jokes, were dug up from a 'shameful' period during which she tried to be as 'inflammatory and controversial as possible', as she phrased it in a lengthy apology. 'That was my account and those were my words', she wrote, adding that she was now 'truly sorry from the bottom of my heart'. But she hit back at further online speculation that she was 'pedophile, a zoophile, or a porn-addicted incest fetishist'. She had been, she wrote, the target of a 'transphobic/otherwise targeted smear campaign' that had also led to her personal accounts being hacked and family doxed and harrassed. Anhedönia holds several positions that can be hard to reconcile. She's a trans woman who grew up in the conservative southern Baptist community in the Florida panhandle, and still has a deep love affair with the area. She looks like one of the ethereal sisters from The Virgin Suicides, and talks like a girl next door refilling your coffee at a roadside diner, peppering her musings on existentialism and Eraserhead with homely expressions of geez and whatnot. She has experienced sexual trauma and assault, while her music often leans – in her words – 'into sadomasochism' and 'the taboo'. Those nuances are often not acknowledged. 'A lot of people don't know how to interface with media that contains negativity or perversion or sexuality or immorality,' she says. 'It's not the first instinct to engage with these things critically – but when you see a bad character on screen, the movie shouldn't hold your hand and say: Hey, that's the bad guy. That's your job.' In January, Anhedönia released Perverts – an experimental departure from Preacher's Daughter, let alone standard pop fare. Billed as a standalone project, the hour-and-a-half sprawl of ambient, drone and slowcore compositions roots around themes of shame, guilt and pleasure. There are no hooks, no choruses and barely any lyrics. Rather, its unsettling blend of industrial murmurs and desolate spoken word reflects Anhedönia's experience of wandering 'the Great Dark' – her term for a brief but 'scary' winter when she was struggling to adjust to life after coming off tour. Some listeners found it a challenging listen; others considered its references to madness and masturbation alienating. But it successfully reasserted the wide spectrum of Anhedönia's music, which switches from soaring heartland pop-rock to sprawling abstract noise. 'Now that the other end of the Ethel Cain spectrum has been established, I feel like I have a full range,' Anhedönia says. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion The second instalment of the Preacher's trilogy, Willoughby Tucker serves as the prequel to Preacher's Daughter, and has a similar structure – a pop-oriented first half full of youthful optimism, which plunges into slow burning instrumentals and thundering power ballads as the hammer of reality comes down. Beginning in the summer of 1986, it finds Ethel Cain as an insecure teenager 'trying to navigate her first love in a broken world and a broken town'. It wasn't the plan to go back in time. Anhedönia intended to move forward, on to more 'mature' things, but something kept nagging at her. 'That Ethel's entire story began with the love that she had for this boy … It felt like it needed telling. And come hell or high water, it was going to get told. It was practically seeping out of me.' Finishing the album was 'honestly really sad, especially knowing where Preacher's Daughter goes. Sometimes it's hard for me to listen to. I tell myself it's all fictional, but sometimes I'll catch a lyric and it'll resonate exactly with how I'm feeling. And I remember that it's coming from me.' Part of the difficulty in making Willoughby Tucker was the fact that Anhedönia had, at 27, recently entered into her first ever relationship. As she worked on this album, all her own 16-year-old anxieties came back. 'Love was always my final frontier,' she says. 'I never explored it. I never processed anything. I never progressed past the idea of love that I had as a teenager.' There were times when she was crying every day, begging for the album to be finished. She's glad of the process now. 'I see Ethel Cain as a piece of me that I separate from myself and discard, so that I can make good decisions in life,' she says. 'If Preacher's Daughter was my learning experience of what not to do with trauma and healing, Willoughby Tucker has been my experience of what not to do in love.' In the real world, bleak as it is, Anhedönia is determined to live well. Smiling between two long curtains of mousey brown hair, she reels off a list of reasons to get up in the morning: 'A great breakfast, a beautiful sunrise, paying for someone's groceries if they can't.' And then there is love – in her view the most 'high-risk, high-reward' feeling in the world. A few days before we speak, she 'hard launched' her new relationship, sharing a video of her new boyfriend lifting her up on a truck parked on a dirt road, and kissing her. 'Ethel Cain lived and died loving and praying to be loved back,' Anhedönia says. 'The entire Preacher's trilogy is centred around love. Love lost, love gained, love perverted, love stolen. Love is everything to us. It doesn't matter what you love or who you love, but that you love something – and that love is what propels you forward every day. For better or worse, I think that is a beautiful thing.' Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You is released on 8 August.
Yahoo
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Five Years Post-Rehab, $uicideboy$ Are ‘Grateful to be Alive' — And Maybe Even Happy
Back in 2015, Scott Arceneaux Jr. was a common presence at New Orleans post offices. Online, Arceneaux was better known as 'Scrim' — one-half of the emo-rap duo $uicideboy$, which was quickly becoming one of the hottest and most controversial new acts on SoundCloud, with songs about drugs, death and their own misery. But at the post office, he was just Scott, that nice, tattoo-covered guy licking envelopes from opening to closing. Despite the many successes — and even more face tattoos — he's accrued since those post office days, Scrim still clearly carries that same humble, hardworking mentality. 'I remember sitting there and typing up everyone's merch orders,' the 36-year-old reminisces as he shows me around his first 'recording studio' — really his father's backyard shed, which Scrim outfitted with cheap speakers and a laptop back in high school. It's nearly 100 degrees on this June day in suburban Lacombe, La., and the shed's window AC unit is coughing out cool air as hard as it can, but it seems to make no difference. It's just that hot. More from Billboard $uicideboy$: Photos From the Billboard Cover Shoot Fred again.., Skepta & Denzel Curry Welcome Hanumankind to 'Victory Lap Three' Lorde Expands 2026 Australasian Tour With Extra Arena Dates 'We used to do everything,' Scrim recalls of $uicideboy$' early days. 'Everything!' interjects Aristos 'Ruby Da Cherry' Petrou, 35, Scrim's bold, charismatic cousin and the other half of $uicideboy$. 'The album artwork, designing the merchandise, making the beats — which we still do — making the videos, that was all us.' The two often finish each other's sentences. Over a decade into their career, $uicideboy$ have become one of the most successful and lucrative underground (if you can even call a group that sells out arenas that) acts around, and while they've since outsourced the post office gig, Ruby and Scrim still helm the whole operation. They are the proud co-founders of their own label, G*59 Records, which did an eight-figure distribution deal with The Orchard in 2020; their annual multi-artist Grey Day Tour (think Warped Tour but more hardcore and rap-oriented) grossed $50.7 million last year, according to Billboard Boxscore; they built a merch business that made over $30 million in 2024 alone, according to their team. And since 2016, they've done it with the help of co-managers Dana Biondi and Kyle Leunissen, who ensure Ruby and Scrim still have time for the most essential part of it all: the songs. Amazingly, they've achieved all that without cracking the Billboard Hot 100 until their 2024 album, New World Depression, which yielded four songs in the lower 30 slots of the chart and no radio airplay hits. On the Billboard 200, they've fared much better, notching four top 10 albums. But around 2019, all of it — the indie-music empire, relentless schedule of making songs, going on tour and managing the label — nearly came crashing down when Scrim finally decided he needed a break to get clean from the assortment of drugs he was taking on a daily basis. 'I went to treatment, and I was out in [California] for what, nine months?' he recalls, looking to Ruby. 'Then I went in 2020 in October,' Ruby adds. 'I was out there for about six, seven months. So he got his break. I got my break, which I would argue wasn't really a f–king break, considering we were getting off drugs and we were relearning how to live life.' Post-rehab, the duo — named for its blood oath to 'give ourselves 'til 30' to make its music career work 'or we would kill ourselves,' as Ruby explains — was left to answer a challenging question: What would $uicideboy$ be if they got clean — and maybe even got happy? There was no guarantee it would still work. The two enrolled in what they jokingly call 'marriage counseling' to get through it. 'This is like a marriage, and it was helpful. [We did it] with management, too,' Scrim says. With their drug-fueled days behind them (though Ruby still smokes cannabis), the two had to 'relearn how to make music' sober, as Scrim puts it; find their faith in a higher power; and rebuild their lives. Five years later, the two cousins speak to Billboard as they have discovered the fruits of this rebuild. Their latest album, Thy Kingdom Come, planned for an Aug. 5 release, chronicles the latest chapter of their journey, including 'hardships of being on the road, loneliness, getting old,' Scrim says. Soon after, they will embark on the latest Grey Day Tour, and rumors are circling of a catalog deal, which sources tell Billboard could be worth $300 million or more (while Biondi recently acknowledged to Billboard that 'something firm' is in the works, the team declined to provide an update). But more than any accolade, $uicideboy$ are most 'grateful to be alive,' Scrim admits. 'Honestly, I never thought I'd get here.' There is a framed portrait of Saddam Hussein made out of LEGOs on Ruby's living room wall. 'I put it up to make sure y'all get it in the shot,' he says with a laugh to me and the Billboard camera crew when we visit his house in the 7th Ward of New Orleans. He used to live in this unassuming ranch-style home, but now he splits his time between a different house in town and a place in the Florida Panhandle. He likes to go there with his girlfriend when the beachgoing tourists leave: '[I like] when it's almost a ghost town. It's a very simple life.' Ruby held on to this house, however, to turn it into a state-of-the-art recording studio and overall dude wonderland. Along with the music gear a studio requires, the walls are painted various neon shades, and the place is littered with Sopranos memorabilia (his current rewatch tally: 23), Pokémon plushies, Hot Wheels cars and vintage Pac-Man consoles. The place looks like the inside of Ruby's brain — fun-loving and obsessive, with a twisted sense of humor. He's also got a 'gay frog' he bought as a joke from InfoWars, a collection of DVDs he did not buy ('I stole them') from a video store where he once worked (he claims it was run by the mob) and a very… imaginative painting of a prison cell where Hillary Clinton has Jeffrey Epstein in a headlock. Most importantly, the house has AC. As he shows me around, Ruby explains how he developed a fascination with dictators like Hussein and collects memorabilia of them — a possible result of his addictive personality. 'They fascinate me,' he says. 'Obviously they're horrible people who committed atrocities, but the idea of how power affects someone like that is so interesting.' Ruby grew up playing drums in punk bands, despising authority and always looking for a way out of the nine-to-five slog he figured awaited him in adulthood. He recalls being frustrated with early bandmates who weren't as determined or invested as he was and the teasing he endured for caring so much about music. 'It wasn't cool to step out of the lines,' he says. After finishing school, Ruby called his cousin Scrim, who was at the time becoming a popular local DJ and producer. 'He was the only person that every time I said, 'Let's do this today,' he was down,' Ruby says. 'I'd argue that's what separates us from a lot of people. Even if it's not convenient for us, we just do it because we love to do it. Doesn't matter the time, place or whatever.' Scrim adds: 'It didn't matter [what was happening], we got it done. I was in here with no excuses — withdrawing, detoxing, whatever.' The DIY punk ethos fueled their early career, when the two would stand on street corners at Louisiana State University (they weren't students there) handing out mixtapes. 'Then we'd walk 10 feet and see every CD we just handed out [in the trash],' Scrim says with an eye roll. Ruby also recalls a list of 'a thousand rap blogs' he made and reached out to. It yielded two write-ups. Then, one day they went over to Ruby's friend's house: '[He] pulls up YouTube and then pulls up Yung Lean, Xavier Wulf, BONES, Ugly Mane, and I'm like, 'What the f–k…?' We just weren't familiar with the new underground SoundCloud thing that was going on. We were doing things in an ancient kind of way… I remember leaving the house and my mind being so f–ked up,' Scrim says. 'That's when everything changed. That's when we started attacking the internet.' With the first 10 volumes of its Kill Your$elf mixtape series (titles include Kill Your$elf Part I: The $uicide $aga and Kill Your$elf Part IV: The Trill Clinton $aga; the latter's artwork features its namesake in sunglasses, blowing on a saxophone, overlaid on an American flag) released in 2014 and 2015, the two began to amass a fan base of struggling misfits just like them and fed the fandom with limited-edition merch drops, a la Supreme, which Ruby designed himself. Scrim was more the numbers guy — that's what led him to keep track of addresses at the post office, sending packages to fans around the country himself. 'He also had a checkbook balanced to the penny,' co-manager Leunissen says. 'He's a perfectionist when it comes to that stuff.' The cousins worked as if their lives depended on it — because really, they did. Leunissen and Biondi joined the team in 2016. Leunissen, a friend of Scrim's since high school, was working as a sports agent in Atlanta, and Biondi was an artist manager for up-and-coming rappers, in search of his next project. In hopes of helping out his friend Scrim, Leunissen told Biondi — one of his few connections to the music business — about a show $uicideboy$ were about to play at the Roxy in Los Angeles. Biondi went and was immediately taken by the energy $uicideboy$ stirred in the crowd. 'When I got started in the business, it was mostly weed rap,' Biondi says. 'Very hug the wall, look cool, smoke your joint kind of stuff. When I walked into that show, the kids were mosh pitting, and I was like, 'S–t, this is different. It's a punk show, but it's rap.' ' The cousins have been known to take turns with their verses onstage, rapping and screaming out to the crowd, stoking their fans' pent-up frustrations and turning it into a mad, kinetic energy. 'I've always been a rap guy and thought, 'This is the future of the genre.' I needed to figure this out, and I called Kyle, saying, 'Let's partner up.' ' Biondi wasn't the first to reach out. Around that time, he recalls, other savvy A&R executives and managers were circling the duo, too. Ruby says that the labels approaching $uicideboy$ back then were 'much more aggressive' with their deal terms 'before we had managers,' perhaps sensing the pair's vulnerability. The cousins realized they needed some help, but they weren't convinced a label was the right fit. As Scrim told Billboard in 2021, Leunissen pitched the rap duo on the foursome working together by saying, ' 'You're letting 70 grand fall through the cracks every year.' That caught our attention,' Scrim said. 'For my cousin and I, $70,000 might as well have been a million at the time.' 'We still explored all label options,' Biondi says. 'It just became pretty clear that between them just being unreal at what they do, and then us being able to provide the back end that was needed, that the best fit was doing it all ourselves. Also, I think it was just those contracts from 2016 to 2017 were just so locked down, so 360. It was scary to meet somebody a couple times and then sign three, four or five albums away and be like, 'Let's just see what happens!' I saw that the industry was changing, and we wanted to try to build it ourselves.' It was a prescient call. Within five years, major labels began to move away from offering 360 deals for competitive signings and instead even gave some top signing priorities ultra-friendly licensing deals allowing them to regain their recordings from the label after a set number of years. Meanwhile, the market started to shift in favor of a growing cohort of artists across genres, like $uicideboy$, who along with the support of their managers were doing it all on their own. For about a year, Leunissen recalls, $uicideboy$ remained on TuneCore, the DIY distribution company that allows artists to pocket 100% of their royalties for a small upfront fee, and they continued to build their brand. 'We did 120-something shows in that first year or so, and the money coming in [from TuneCore] really helped fund everything. We would distribute the payments to them, and the business was running along,' Leunissen says. In 2017, they launched G59 Records with distribution from Virgin, and Ruby and Scrim used the platform to sign their contemporaries, like Germ, Chetta, Shakewell and Crystal Meth. G59 signees benefit from a number of special perks. Scrim and Ruby say they often offer feedback to their roster, when requested, or feature on their tracks to help them build momentum. Signing to G59 also tends to mean being first in line to get a slot on the Grey Day Tour, placing the new artists in front of captive audiences and beside other, bigger acts like $uicideboy$, Turnstile and Denzel Curry. By 2020, $uicideboy$ still hadn't charted a single Hot 100 hit, but their robust merch, touring and streaming success made them impossible to ignore. Sony's distributor The Orchard came calling, offering the G59 crew an eight-figure sum to move the label over to it. With newfound clarity from their stints in recovery programs and so-called 'marriage counseling,' the rejuvenated and rehabilitated $uicideboy$ took the deal and have since re-upped to another term in 2023. The Orchard's CEO, Brad Navin, tells Billboard his first impression of the duo was simply: 'What is this?' But after diving deeper into what made the band tick, he found a 'highly engaged, highly loyal' cohort of followers driving its formidable business. It was unlike anything he had seen before. '$uicideboy$ are unique in every way, as both entrepreneurs and as artists,' he says. 'They tend to avoid the mainstream at all times… But they have an acute understanding of who their fans are, and everything they do is with their fans in mind. That's what makes them so powerful.' 'I think from the beginning, our goal was to have a cult-like following,' Scrim says, getting out a pink vape while he speaks. 'Ruby helped me see that that was the way.' It's still rare to see $uicideboy$ get mainstream accolades — they do little press, don't court radio programmers, don't use TikTok and have yet to achieve a Grammy Award nomination — and for the most part, that's OK with them. 'I think it'd be cool to win a Grammy, but it's not something that we're banking on or something we're actively trying to achieve,' Scrim says. 'If it happens, it happens. But, I mean, I don't think that'll ever happen. No matter what… we just don't get a lot of industry recognition.' Ruby adds: 'Honey, we ain't worried about it either.' For them, looking out at the arena-size crowds each night on an annual tour they made in their own image is still an incredible outcome. 'It's obvious that we made it,' Ruby says. 'I know there's somebody in here tonight — I don't know who — who's struggling,' Scrim says. 'If you're in that spot and you feel like s–t's hopeless, you feel unloved, misunderstood, unworthy, whatever the case may be, I'm here to ask you, from me and Ruby, if you can't do it for yourself, do it for us: Don't ever, ever give up.' The crowd at Las Vegas' MGM Grand Garden Arena last September roared — as it does every night when Scrim closes out the act's notoriously raucous show with this speech. It's become a tradition by accident. Overcome with emotion one night, a newly sober Scrim decided to speak off the cuff at the end of a set. 'It just became this thing that I continue to do, but I do feel… like when Lil Wayne was getting high — I'm not blaming him — but [as a fan], I did it, too, and I remember when he had that period where he put out a mixtape and he was getting sober, so I tried to get sober. It had a real effect on me because I idolized this guy.' He knows that for his fans, he holds the same stature. As the two continue in their recovery, Ruby and Scrim have both become much more reflective about what $uicideboy$ means, and whether they can turn their fans' fervor into lifesaving outcomes. While the point at the beginning of their career was to make music that 'flexed their own misery,' as Ruby has joked, but didn't glorify it, and to create a community for struggling kids and iconoclasts to bond over voicing the hard, and often distasteful, truths of depression, the power they wield still clearly weighs on them. Now they say they're on a mission to do what they can to 'save 100,000 souls before [we] leave this earth,' says Ruby, who, like Scrim, has gotten more in touch with his faith since going to rehab. 'I think at one point it seemed like, in 2016 to 2017, everybody was on drugs… and we felt like we opened this box [with our music] that we weren't supposed to open,' he continues. 'It was never like, 'Hey everybody, go do heroin, it was great.' It was more like, 'This is what the f–k we do…' We were very unapologetic.' On new album Thy Kingdom Come, $uicideboy$ won't shy away from the dark subject matter that got them where they are now, but they've become far more thoughtful about how they go about it. Now in their mid-30s, Scrim and Ruby say they have witnessed the first signs of aging and mortality — the constant jumping around onstage isn't as easy as it once was, Scrim laments — and life is different: Scrim's married, Ruby's in a serious relationship, they work out every day, and they're more committed than ever to their work. 'You know, it's funny, because I spent most of my life wanting to kill myself,' Scrim says with a bemused look as he describes his current gym routine. 'And now I'm terrified of dying.' Look up 'Suicideboys' on TikTok (without the dollar signs) and you'll find just one result: a suicide prevention message that reads, 'You're not alone. If you or someone you know is having a hard time, help is always available: View resources.' I ask Ruby and Scrim about it, and whether online safety blocks for words like 'suicide' ever made them reconsider the name, whether for business purposes or for sensitivity. 'I did recently, actually,' Ruby says, turning to Scrim. 'I don't know if I told you this. But then I personally was like, 'Yeah, f–k that.' At the end of the day, we don't do this for followers… at the end of the day, it's not about us. And I think fans would get upset if we changed our name. I like that when you search it, it's like, 'Are you good?' ' 'To me, it represents…' Scrim adds, pausing to consider his words. 'I don't even know where to start. It represents so much.' As usual, Ruby finishes his thought: 'It represents our unwillingness to conform.' And Scrim agrees. 'And it shows the dark s–t we came from to the way we are now. I mean, it means so much.' If you or anyone you know is in crisis, call 988 or visit the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline's website for free, confidential emotional support and resources 24/7. This story appears in the July 19, 2025, issue of Billboard. Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Janet Jackson's Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits H.E.R. & Chris Brown 'Come Through' to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay Chart Solve the daily Crossword
CairoScene
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
Egypt's Rap Roots: Shahyn
Egypt's Rap Roots: Shahyn Long before viral hits and streaming platforms, Egyptian rapper Shahyn was making noise throughout the Bluetooth era, trading tracks through hard drives and Facebook links. Active since 2006, when the rap scene in Egypt was still considered subcultural, it's hard to overstate Shahyn's impact on the rap scene - not only as a skilled lyricist, but as a community builder. As a teenager in Alexandria, drawn in by old-school hip-hop influences like Tupac, Shahyn joined Y‑Crew Family (one of the city's foundational rap collectives) alongside the likes of Omar Boflot and Yassin Zahran. The crew's grassroots ethos defined his early years: rough demos, cultural venue gigs, and a lyrical style sharpened by satire, street smarts, and an instinct for storytelling. As the digital landscape evolved, so too did the scene. SoundCloud opened doors, YouTube offered visibility, streaming platforms emerged, and Egyptian rap expanded. Yet through all of these changes, Shahyn remained a constant force in the rap game, growing his loyal following over the years. Today, he holds a rare position in Egypt's rap timeline. He belongs to the generation that built the scene from scratch, but his music still lands with younger audiences navigating a very different landscape. That continuity matters, because while most of today's artists are more visible than ever, many still work within structures Shahyn and his peers helped create. Shahyn's story reminds us that Egypt's rap scene didn't appear fully formed. It was passed through USB ports and hard drives, burned onto discs, and played on Nokia speakers. Egypt's Rap Roots is SceneNoise's new series diving into the evolution of Egypt's most popular alternative music scene, tracing the timeline through the experiences of pioneering artists.
Stuff.tv
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Stuff.tv
Best electronic instruments in 2025, including MIDI keyboards, drum pads and samplers
Electronic instruments have come a long way since New Order sequenced Blue Monday using binary code. Now it's all quantised beats, USB-C, and expensive noise-cancelling headphones. And if you're in the market for modern melodies, these are the machines you need. From MIDI keyboards to beat pads, below you'll find an orchestra of tools for making electronic music. Whether you're tinkering with your first track or ready to lay down another lo-fi banger, the kit listed here will help you sample, sequence and synthesise your way to a smash hit. Or at least something worth sharing on SoundCloud. Don't know your MIDI DIN from your MIDI in? We've also broken down some electronic lingo to help you out. Give it a read, and you'll know your controllers better than Jean-Michel Jarre knows his laser harp. Why you can trust Stuff: Our team of experts rigorously test each product and provide honest, unbiased reviews to help you make informed decisions. For more details, read how we test and rate products. The best electronic instruments you can buy today: The rhythm rig 1. Native Instruments Maschine Mikro Amadeus never needed drum pads. Then again, Wolfgang didn't do trip-hop beats. If your unfinished symphony is more Massive Attack than Mozart, try this groovebox. Colour-coded pads help you compose percussion parts with targeted taps, while a Smart Strip lets you mix up your kicks with Perform FX. Plus, the Maschine software has more instruments than an orchestra. The groovy grid 2. Novation Launchpad X You need light and sound for a desktop disco. Luckily, this rainbow grid does both. Like a dancefloor for your fingers, the 64-pad plinth lets you paint your tunes with RGB pixels. Designed for Ableton Live, it also functions as a fully mappable MIDI controller. Tap out patterns on the velocity-sensitive squares, and the capture mode will ensure you never miss a beat. The stealthy stepper 3. Arturia BeatStep Sometimes the biggest beats start with something small. Don't let its stature fool you: this compact controller can do it all. Use its pressure-sensitive pads for finger drumming or switch to sequencer mode to create 16-step patterns. Matching pitch knobs give you granular command of every note, while iPad connectivity means your rhythm isn't tied to a desk. The sound snatcher 4. Teenage Engineering EP 133 K.O. II The music man might be able to play the piano, but can he record a dog's bark and sequence it into a drum and bass banger? Probably not, but this distinctive sampler can. Styled like a Lego answering machine and just as fun to play with, battery power and a built-in mic mean it's made for going walkabout. Punch-in effects let you mangle samples on the fly, too. The standalone studio 5. Yamaha SEQTRAK You could build a studio in your shed. Or for a portable production setup, try this Yamaha hybrid. Part sampler, part sequencer, part synth – plus a sound effects section: the SEQTRAK is a self-contained station for crafting electronic jams. Lightweight but heavy on features, it includes a library of 2000 presets. There's even an integrated speaker for impromptu gigs. The rugged recorder 6. Roland SP-404MKII It might look like a hardcore calculator, but this button box is actually built for crunching notes, not numbers. Tough enough for any beat battle, its hands-on interface and signature sounds have made the SP a cult hit with DIY musicians. An OLED display makes it easier to layer loops, stack effects and slice samples in real time, which is a lot more fun than solving equations. The mini maestro 7. Akai Professional MPK Mini MK3 The Swiss Army doesn't need a MIDI controller. If it did, this would be the one. A fun-sized performer you can play several ways, it's a versatile utensil for tinkering with tunes. The 25 mini keys keep your fingers busy, along with eight pads, a pitch stick and a built-in arpeggiator. Assignable knobs complete the ensemble. The only thing missing is a bottle opener. The tactile tinkler 8. Roli Seaboard M When is a mini keyboard not a keyboard? When it's a haptic slab of sonic expression. Swapping regular keys for a responsive playing surface, the smallest Seaboard lets you glide, slide and press your way to organic sounds that a pitch wheel could only dream of – from swelling synths to string vibrato. Need more range? Magnetic connectors let you attach additional boards for extra octaves. Buy Now The portable performer 9. Korg nanoKEY Fold Even composers need a summer break. Pack this travel-sized MIDI keyboard for tunes wherever your next tour takes you. Lightweight at just 126g, the flat-pack piano folds in half without sacrificing features. 25 silent membrane keys mean you can rehearse without disturbing fellow passengers, while a pair of touch sliders let you perfect your melodies, whether you're taking them to Malibu or Ibiza. How to choose the best electronic instrument Looking to buy the best electronic instrument but don't know where to start? Here are some things to consider: Pads: Want to finger drum like Fred Again? Pick a tool with percussive pads. Some are velocity-sensitive for responsive beats, while others have RGB backlighting for better visual feedback when you're deep in the groove. Want to finger drum like Fred Again? Pick a tool with percussive pads. Some are velocity-sensitive for responsive beats, while others have RGB backlighting for better visual feedback when you're deep in the groove. Keys: MIDI keys come in different renditions, from plasticky plonkers to pressure-sensitive sets. If you play piano, you'll want ivories with proper travel. If you just need to trigger chords, a lighter touch will do. MIDI keys come in different renditions, from plasticky plonkers to pressure-sensitive sets. If you play piano, you'll want ivories with proper travel. If you just need to trigger chords, a lighter touch will do. Connectivity: USB-C, MIDI DIN, CV/GATE: connectivity can make or break your setup. Check what language your gear speaks before shelling out. Some instruments double as audio interfaces, with input ports for mics and other sources. USB-C, MIDI DIN, CV/GATE: connectivity can make or break your setup. Check what language your gear speaks before shelling out. Some instruments double as audio interfaces, with input ports for mics and other sources. Software: Not all tools are plug-and-play. Some need a digital audio workstation (DAW) to function. If you prefer jamming to programming, pick one with built-in brains so you can noodle without a laptop. Now check out Stuff's guide to the best creative control panels.
Atlantic
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
Lorde Is Looking in the Mirror. Again.
Has the internet sucked all the fun out of the physical world, or has it merely concentrated it in Washington Square Park? New York University's de facto campus green has long served as an open-air salon for bohemians and drug dealers, but since the coronavirus pandemic, it's buzzed with new energy—the energy of content creation. TikTokers patrol the park's paths, ambushing passersby to ask for interviews. Video-game streamers lead fans around ' like a Pied Piper.' Timothée Chalamet went there to check out his own look-alike competition. The veil between the online and offline realms feels thin as Zoomers socialize in their Zoomer way: playful, anarchic, yet always aware of the camera. Lorde is there too. The 28-year-old pop eccentric claims to have been hanging out in Washington Square Park 'every day' of late. In April, she caused a commotion there by blasting her new single to a crowd of fans while filming a guerrilla-style music video. Her propulsive fourth album, Virgin, is set amid the heat-radiating pavement of the park and its downtown-Manhattan surroundings. The exemplary voice for a generation beset by digitally induced isolation, Lorde is making a bold effort to celebrate the visceral by singing of flesh, spit, sweat, blood, and cigarette smoke. But the rush she wants to deliver is diluted by another modern problem: self-consciousness verging on self-obsession. Lorde changed the world when she was just a 16-year-old New Zealander uploading music to SoundCloud. Her 2013 debut, Pure Heroine, used hissed confessions, minimalistic beats, and a writerly sense of narrative to refute its era's abundance of body-over-brain EDM and hip-hop. Many of her listeners were kids in the very same situation that Lorde sang about: stuck in a bedroom in their anonymous town, alienated from the high life advertised on their screens. The influence of that album—and its smoldering 2017 follow-up, Melodrama —still shapes the work of Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, and even Taylor Swift. The point of post-Lorde pop isn't to get faceless crowds grooving mindlessly. It's to make each individual fan feel like their life is a movie. Lorde then disoriented her audience with 2021's Solar Power, a warm sigh of an album from a star enjoying some well-deserved relaxation. Its strummy songs about fleeing Hollywood to get high on a New Zealand beach contained some of the most beautiful craftsmanship of her career. But fans who'd always related to her started to feel left out of the story she was telling: Lorde was slowing down and leaning out at a time of life, her early 20s, when people tend to speed up and lean in. For many listeners, traits that had been essential to her art all along—overwroughtness, sentimentality, affectation—stopped seeming so cute. Virgin is, as its name suggests, a purposeful regression, a return to youthful possibility. The sound is electronic and rhythmically driven; the singing trembles with desire and confusion. But Virgin also reflects where Lorde finds herself in her late 20s, and where pop finds itself in the mid-2020s. Following the example of Charli XCX's Brat and its avant-garde influences, the producer Jim-E Stack has fashioned fun beats out of distorted noise. Lorde sings about a transitional period of womanhood marked by pregnancy tests, gender-identity explorations, body-image issues, crises of confidence, and a shattering breakup with her partner of seven years. The action is as spiritual as it is physical: 'I might have been born again,' she sings on the opener. The ensuing songs are laden with so many religious references that one wonders if she's joined an unconventional church in which singing about kinky sex and party drugs is a sacrament. More likely, Lorde is just trying to lend enchantment to her 21st-century yuppie routine. The titanium water bottle she carries around is, she's said in interviews, a ' talisman.' Her smartphone is, per one lyric, 'liquid crystal.' As she pumps iron and meditates on heartbreak, she seems to imagine her younger self looking down like an 'angel.' She confesses to having treated her ex like God—but now, it's clear, Lorde's lord is Lorde. The album's best moments transmit the magic she's singing about. The bleary garage beat of 'Shapeshifter' creates a sense of twilight intrigue building to dawn-breaking revelation. On 'If She Could See Me Now,' rigid-feeling verses melt satisfyingly into swaying choruses. When Lorde's voice merges with waves of reverb on the gut-punch closer, 'David,' you might check to see if the music is coming from outside, not inside, your headphones. Throughout, she uses conversational cadences to steer through hairpin emotional turns without making anyone dizzy. Too often, though, Virgin 's thrill is muddled or muted. In part, blame Stack's production: The trappings of sonic radicalism and aggression—industrial guitars that hum like broken TVs, percussion that pounds from all directions—belie what's essentially smooth, streamable fare. Now-tired 2010 fads that Lorde pioneered, including bittersweet tropical-pop textures and moaning vocal snippets, are everywhere. Moments of genuine surprise and extremity are rare. An album that presents itself as stark and liberated feels too much like a product of creative compromise. Against this backdrop, Lorde's insularity starts to wear on the listener. This album about exciting city life is really about Lorde finding herself wherever she goes—in the aura reader on Canal Street, in the shirt her hookup is wearing, in the endorphin epiphany she has at the gym. She sings of ego death and punching mirrors, but only as part of a process of ever-more-granular inward inspection that's intense but ultimately circular. Whatever's happening in the broader world is written off as 'painted faces' babbling about 'current affairs.' As the album cover indicates, Virgin is an X-ray that highlights what's not there. So much of recent pop music is like this—hyperspecifically self-involved—precisely because of Lorde's influence. But Virgin suggests this once-exciting approach is starting to become redundant and rote, reflecting a culture in which introspection has supplanted any sense of common purpose, and no one can tell the difference between living life and performing it. In Lorde's early days, she sang a lot about 'we,' a generational cohort beating back alienation together. Virgin is all 'I'—but a breakthrough awaits when she or one of her talented contemporaries turns their lens outward.
