8.0

GENRE: Hip-hop/Electronic
YEAR OF RELEASE: 2022

Shygirl is floating in the air. In the 12 songs that make up her debut album, Nymph, the British singer—born Blane Muise—levitates above pop and hip-hop formulas with unusual beats and vocal effects. “Do you even know what it’s like this high?” she asks while whispering directly into your ears on intro track “Woe,” a deconstructed club and glitchy-pop production that samples contemporary singer-songwriter Caroline Polacheck’s “Bunny is a Rider.” From far up in the air, the singer enjoys having a curious effect on people: her nonchalant delivery fires you up and makes your brain tilt—is this what everyone’s voice should sound like? Her whispers, which stretch from croons and hums to hip-hop verses, make it hard to place her music into a specific genre—and perhaps that’s the point she’s trying to make.

Much of this inexplicable appeal that the singer holds gains new force with her transcendental stylistic choices on Nymph. She layers her vocal dynamism over punchy trap beats and acoustic guitar on “Shlut,” begs for attention with breathy vocals on the soothing “Heaven,” and accelerates the BPM on “Wildfire.” But she never, absolutely never, loses her cool. When inserting her flow into hyper pop arrangements or singing bluntly about sex in songs like the bubblegum trap “Coochie” and the haunting “Missin U,” she holds a Missy-Elliot-type poise that is quite often conveyed by male rappers and more recently by female storms like Doja Cat. Resembling the woodland divinities from Greek mythology that she named the album after, the artist lurks in from a distance with music that is anything but aloof, her voice shooting through your headphones like the luring chanting of nocturnal mythical creatures.

The album was put together with the help of renowned producers, including Arca (Kanye West, Bjork), BloodPop (Lady Gaga, Madonna), and Sega Bodega (FKA Twigs, Dorian Electra)—still, you wouldn’t hear any of these songs anywhere but on a Shygirl album. On “Come For Me,” it’s easy to identify the glitchy pop and deconstructed reggaeton that made Arca one of the most intriguing producers of our generation, but Shygirl’s stolid hip-hop delivery makes the song her own. On “Firefly,” the highlight of the album, her warbles are so well infused into Kingdom’s vape-y production that his imprint, though still heard, is concealed. Here she sings with the disposition of a woman riding a fast horse, freed from the disillusionment of a broken relationship (It’s been so nice to pretend we could be together again/I’m a fool and I know”). Out of all the songs, “Firefly” is the brightest and most translucid, the one that really flows like a force of nature with its punchy beats and digitally altered chords.

While her previous music was more heated, the new album is sonically softer and even draws from elements of nature—vide the sound of water at the beginning of “Heaven.” But her lyrics are still incisive and, if anything, more emotionally deep; Nymph is a candid assemblage of self-confidence and insecurity, both at once. “Hit a couple guys, they concur, I’m a bad bitch,” she sings in one song showcasing Lizzo-leveled confidence. “I just want a man, I just want a real man,” she sings on another, letting show a needy side of her. There isn’t much of a flaw to that, though, because the music on the album is agreeable front to back. And didn’t Wall Whitman attach being contradictory to containing multitudes anyway? Just like him, Shygirl makes inconsistency look cool.

Listen to Nymph: