OSCAR WILDE noted that if you wanted someone to tell you the truth, let them wear a mask, the creation of an alter-ego allowing them a confidence they may otherwise not have.
Through the six songs on this EP, South London rapper Shygirl creates four different persona - but they share certain traits: confident, unapologetic, and very sexually liberated.
Alias is the most filthy, ribald collection of songs I have heard in years, sometimes leaving nothing to the imagination. Yet, what does it say that, more than 25 years after the release of Madonna’s Erotica and Liz Phair’s Exile In Guyville, that full expressions of female sexuality in music can still raise eyebrows? After all, Alias is no filthier than anything Prince ever released, and Shygirl’s songs of sex are more realistic, for some listeners possibly even empowering, than any amount of the male dominated “gimme a slice of your custard pie” euphemisms we’ve been treated to for decades.
To describe Shygirl as a rapper is to make her one-dimensional. Her flow is impressive, fully inhabiting the character and situation she is singing about, her voice alive to the pace and drama each lyric needs. Similarly, her music draws widely - UK garage and grime, hip hop, club, and excitingly, the more experimental fringes of electronica (there are Aphex Twin like moments on ‘Freak’ and ‘Bawdy’ ).
The sonics coalesce to create, serve, and heighten the drama of each track, plunging the listener into the middle of whatever is going on for Shygirl at that moment, but never at the expense of the song, it enhances, not distracts. This is, after all, an EP that can make you feel like you're in a sweaty nightclub, playing one banger after another, and you just have to get up and dance.
