Semkari – Birth By Sleep (EP Review)

Charleston alternative rap artist, Semkari has just released a 5 song EP entitled Birth By Sleep. In similar fashion to his last album release Lover’s Nightmare, the project presents an electric, genre-twisting, emotional hip-hop feel, with lyrics personal to the life and times of Semkari through love, faded memories, nightlife, and the balance of it all.

Semkari’s sound is very cohesive to this new emo-pop, synth glazed, atmospheric rap sound made famous by artists like XXXTentacian, JuiceWrld, Playboi Carti, and Lil Uzi. Cryptic verses painting faded pictures of Semkari’s experiences aided by fresh, ‘shoulder rolling’, lyrical cadences and tempos with subtle touches of airy auto tune.

With the first 3 tracks, Semkari gives us a few different looks at some uptempo, futuristic bops. “Did It On” takes a spin on a deeper topic of losing love and climbing out of the mental anguish of being lied to and coming to terms with moving on. Although the content matter is dark, Semkari makes this a thumpy, atmospheric jam, with a mix of cadences, rhyme styles, and fun melodies.

“She Wants Me Bad”, which apparently is a favorite of one of our #GxldApproved creatives, DJ DollaMenu, and “Social”-takes us out of the ‘hotbox of regret’ and into the blurry nightlife of finding new muses in the mix and maintaining sanity in the chaos. Slick lyrics with the melodic mumble of Semkari’s ‘faded in the club’ style, will have you doing the ‘Uzi shoulder roll’ for the next 6 minutes.

The title track “Birth By Sleep” takes a bit of a turn with a slow-burn, acoustic rubbed, instrumental with a lightly-trap based backbone. Full of very melodic lyrics with a slight punk rock drive, “Birth By Sleep” is a downpour of Semkari’s ode to love lost and finding himself within the blur of good memories, bad memories and dreams of his past love.

Check out Birth By Sleep below and tap in to #GxldApproved creative, Semkari.