New Artist Discovery: Babebee's 'A PROPHECY'
Sprung from another name change while meddling with production gear, or maybe deep diving into a KennyBeats discord, Babebee is an artist resolute in their creative venture. They’re a multidisciplinary auteur electronically cured by the internet, their heritage, and karaoke. Born in the US, living with her Grandmother in Korea before returning to be raised in Georgia, Babebee has a sound that is an intentional suture of different worlds, sometimes blending – often colliding – in brilliant contrast. While growing up in the shadow of K-Pop & loud bar songs, music was always a curiosity for the young artist. But beyond a few youthful tv tryouts, Babebee settled into a more traditional, academic path. Channeling creativity inspired by Joji, Babebee pivoted from their student life of film studies to music, using it as a form of self therapy. Now, they capture generational trauma and churn it into sonic catharsis, which led to post-pandemic internet success and a record deal with the stalwart Epitaph.
Comfortably co-inhabiting the chasm between obvious genres, Babebee’s sound has consistently evolved since their first album ’portal of my soul.’ This is an album that began to define the indefinable fluidity of their sound, exhibiting more and more discipline with each song. The eclectic nature of Babebee’s sound was reserved to the individual tracks, each one fearlessly disconnected from the next, but also bridged by a curiosity most tangible in their voice. As their music evolved, most evident in their second album ‘mind over matter,’ the inter-dimensionalism of the artist’s influences began to sort itself into individual songs. Prominently, there’s the veins of K-Pop, nervously reimagined into bedroom pop with breakbeat underpinnings. Also, a fullness of rich melodies & bright choruses on the record showed a real compositional growth, an evolution in confidence, leading to a familiar pattern of song devolution.
The capriciousness of Babebee’s sound, its earnestness mixed with the surreal, has culminated in their most recent work, the album ‘A PROPHECY.’ This record, true to form, is a deep mélange of modern genres. It explores industrial textures alongside bass riddled trap beats and hyperpop hooks: an exceptionalism collage, a fearless exchange of ideation & execution.
For an artist self-taught in music production, raised on the nerd endeavors of Tumblr, maybe this belief in proxy structure is appropriate, that all structure is meant to be broken down, resized without dimensions and made to feel as the emotions did, complex but intuitive to emote. What we can be hopeful for is more of Babebee, like their namesake, rebirthing themselves with each new release, growing into something new each time.
