There’s cause to be skeptical of the calculated chaos that has critics fawning over skaiwater. Add a weeping pattern right here, throw in a burnt 808 sample there, make a brash new rap sound palatable to poptimists… aren’t we somewhat uninterested in this after Travis Scott? However then I activate a tune fairly actually referred to as “pop” and all of it melts away. Possibly as a result of skaiwater’s frag-rap pyrotechnics aren’t a lot the purpose as they’re the scaffolding for what’s changing into a dagger of a pen.
“pop,” initially launched on skaiwater’s SoundCloud burner account a couple of months in the past, makes one of the best case for skaiwater’s mad science since final 12 months’s staggering single “rain.” Like that tune, “pop” seems like a flower rising from the rubble of an OsamaSon tape. However on a writing stage, “pop” is a strain cooker inside which a relationship is imploding. In two verses sandwiched by an enormous, “Certain 2”-ass hook, skaiwater raps in wispy, forlorn swooshes, like a baby-voice Carti hurriedly narrating partitions of textual content about doing all the things to make this shit work with their companion. Over a twangy loop laden with choral notes that Ye would possibly’ve used twenty years in the past to do stressed-out, blue-collar raps, skaiwater gasps, “I’ve been working extra time for you, bae.” They make relationship blues really feel like your coronary heart’s falling out of your chest and 20 tales down.