At the beginning of the year, explosive North West beats started popping up on my Instagram feed via Babyxsosa snippets, then about a month later, she was officially on the roster of Gamma, the music distribution company currently in the business of rehabilitating the image of her pops, Kanye West. Now, the 12-year-old has rapped and produced an entire EP, North4Evr, which absorbs digicore sounds—ezcodylee’s punk-inspired electric guitars on “#North4ever,” Slayr’s maximalism on “W0ah”—into her state of family-approved, pre-teen rebellion. “D!e” is the one that grabbed my attention immediately because of the intensity of her bitcrushed emotions and the out-of-thin-air Jersey club breakdown. North’s heavy distortion and fast-shifting ideas ultimately remind me of better stuff, though, like the chaotic hilarity of Skaiwater’s “Rain” and the improvisational whimsy of Lucy Bedroque’s “Ultraviolet.” North’s take on this anarchy is too fine-tuned and stainless, how I imagine rage rap-inspired k-pop would go down.
