SMK – “DOPE”

SMK is a Berlin-based producer and they’ve linked up with Rubin Kind, a French-Luxembourgish artist who also lives in Berlin, and the two of them have made something that doesn’t sound like it came from one place. The beat pulls from amapiano and Afrobeats but there’s hip-hop and electro-pop in there too, and somehow none of it feels like it’s fighting for space. It just works.

Rubin Kind sings in French and English and that bilingual thing isn’t a gimmick here, it actually adds to the mood. Her voice is soft and melodic and it sits really nicely against a beat that has way more edge to it than you’d expect on first listen. The contrast is kind of the whole point and it pays off. The song is about a friendship that drifted, that kind of quiet loss you don’t always have words for, and it captures that feeling without being dramatic about it. Tyla was apparently a reference point for the amapiano side of things and you can hear traces of that bounce, but this is its own thing.

Honestly this is one of those tracks I’d put on without thinking twice. Go back through SMK’s older work if you haven’t already, and follow Rubin Kind now before everyone else does. Are you sleeping on the Berlin scene or have you already been paying attention?