Written by Elijah P. “Lahat sabog/ fuck it, we get lit,” maki! declares on “popout,” a year-opener single that wastes zero time pretending it’s anything deeper than adrenaline and appetite. But that’s the trick: what sounds like disposable turn-up rap is also a tight little mission statement. maki! opens the track greeting the listener like he’s clocking into a shift, then asks for love with the kind of hunger that most rappers like him wouldn’t barely achieve. maki! does it effortlessly. “popout” runs under two minutes, and it moves at the speed of an online reel. The beat leans into bitcrushed, 8-bit textures, turning trap into something glitchy and pixelated. maki! slides across it with melodic autotune warps and chopped-up vocal flickers, tossing newly heated ad-libs. The parking-lot setting in the song’s music video feels right: fluorescent, chaotic, nocturnal, and ready for trouble. What separates him from the usual mumble haze is that he actually commits to a slightly tilted rise of momentum. He gets from point A to point B cleanly, no dead air, no lazy hook crutch, no filler bars pretending to be vibes. With the internet pushing this slayr/CHE-adjacent strain of pixel-trap forward, maki! sounds tapped into the mutation early, proving local rap gets to catch up, sharpening their skillset into something truly their own. Support the art and the artist:
Tag: Plugg
TRACK REVIEW: GRE! – Sa’kin
Written by J.K. Caray QC-based producer/rapper GRE!’s latest single is unlike anything you’ve ever heard from him. Released mere days after his other single “äll.gre!,” ‘Sa’kin’ shows a completely different side to GRE!’s capabilities, all without the cost of stripping his signature style. This track marks another turning point in his ever-changing discography. In a natural evolution from his usual sonic aesthetics, “Sa’kin” displays the masterful marriage of two genres: Pluggnb and Hyperpop. Bound within the flawlessly tight production, GRE! displays his musical prowess in a way that furthers both. Starting off with dreamy and atmospheric synths, the performance in this track impresses with its vocals, reminiscent of hyperpop artists like glaive and ericdoa, encased within the confines of ice cold autotune. The infectious trap beats, piercing chiptune melodies and heart-thumping string sections create a behemoth of a song that sounds larger than life at times; a refreshing yet much-needed style to alleviate the plugg scene from his repetitive contemporaries. It’s obvious that GRE! knows exactly what he’s doing and he’s not afraid to switch it up. As his third single for the year, the track could very well be a part of a new album or a new era but if one thing is for sure, it’s that he’s going to go far. After “Sa’kin,” you’re left to wonder, just what else can he do? How far is he going to go? And most importantly, can you still keep up? Support the art & the artist:
RACK REVIEW: Gre! – Staywme
Written by Elijah P. Once you hear the sound cues of ice bouncing on the glass and the keys bouncing a millisecond after the producer tag, you know that you’re in for a plugg showdown. Gre! – QC-based and aiming for Metro Manila’s best kept secrets – released “Staywme”, produced by dopamine, a little over a week ago in the time of this writing, and since then, it hasn’t left my mind how the rapper-slash-resident-growler-of-a-metalcore-band has an impressive streak of writing the best melodies known to the post-lockdown crowd (examples: Majica and VOID). The surprise doesn’t come from the fact that it’s a Plugg track – a formula that might be nearing its end after a shelf life two years of gig freeze alongside several Soundcloud anons trying and testing the template effectively – but rather Grei embodies the Plugg with infectious verses, executing a chorus-free single and armed with loads of melodic syllables and lines that call for “bebe time” during autotuned croons and trap hijinks, ultimately extending the possibilities of plugg once more in the latest single. “Staywme” is target practice for Grei, maybe even a no-sweat affair or rather a genre hopping test drive, either way he fits the bill in both genres. An ear for genres could mean a master scheming their way to success and “Staywme” feels like a swaggering flex of Plugg-ian proportions. Support the art & the artist: