When trap and lo-fi influences come together, a lot of amazing things can happen, but when you add in a vicious delivery like that of Veve C in her new single “Breeze,” we wind up with a sound just too charismatic to be dismissed. There’s more than a lot of quality hip-hop in the North American underground this summer, with artists blending aesthetics from across the board to make unique cocktails suited to individual personalities, and of those that I’ve had the chance to check out personally in the last few months, Veve C is one that sets herself apart.
The vocal in “Breeze” doesn’t have quite as much space as it needs in the grander scheme of things, but I get where this rapper was coming from in terms of the production angle. By giving herself a limited amount of room to be indulgent, Veve C has to execute one tight verse after another, never letting the bassline get ahead of her in the mix but instead setting the tempo all by herself. She’s got the rhythm of a razor blade in the wind, but she’s controlling the vibe with her hesitant placement of the harder verses in this track.
Methodical as she might be, Veve C isn’t stripping all of the cosmetic luster from the pot in this performance – contrarily, the music video for “Breeze” is a strangely hypnotic and sensuous visualizer. Without using a lot of familiar dream imagery, a cerebral atmosphere sprouts out of the imagery in this video that is quite fetching beside the soundtrack, and I think it really does a good job of capturing the mood of the music as it stands without any visual scheme at all. This is what I pictured when I listened to the song, and it fits the personality of the creator impeccably.
Credibility is a hard-earned commodity in the underground music community, and I don’t envision Veve C having a hard time attaining a lot of respect from her peers and critics with content as strong as “Breeze.” Her scene is among the more insular that I follow, but it’s not devoid of serious competition – if anything, this daring look is what she needs to make her mark both in and outside of her local beat. I find the construction of this piece especially alluring, and I hope it’s a format that Veve C decides to stick with in her upcoming releases.
