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California hip hop artist Nemesis believes her forté is “crafting words around beats,” and her forté is on full display in her new single “Vibe Flow.”
“This is a song that’s built for the summertime,” she said, “for parties, for having a good time without any violence, for to uplifting the community, for giving everybody something to vibe to and feel good vibes from, for the summertime this year on the westside of California.”
She starts off singing slow and mellow with a soft, jazzy tenor sax in the background. The feeling is exactly like the first lines.
All these pretty lights
As we ride through the night
Got me feeling vibes
Llike it’s love at first sight
You’re cruising in the convertible with the night air all around, and then the beat kicks in and brings the energy with it.
This is how my vibe flows
This is how my tribe rolls
Ride on for another block or two and then the rap takes the convertible up on the freeway.
Yo my flow blows vibes like breezes through park treeses
In cities g’s break down blocks like gratin cheeses
Sneezing up legions from the chem trail diseases
Confounded by spiritual ills like trickin and skeezin
It fits totally her definition of a banger: It is intense and gets you moving. This one she calls a “westside banger,” because she is on the West Coast, in Los Angeles, and, in fact, is from the west side of that city.
Crafting the words around beats, says Nemesis, is “the basic joy for me.” In “Vibe Flow,” the vocal tracks flow around each other, now front, now back, this side, that side, up and down.
“My niche is that I take a song and it’s my arrangement because I don’t just get a beat and rap. I choose instead to listen to the beat, study it, study the bar count, the rhythms. Then I start placing my words in there as if they are notes. I’m adding notes to the song, as if my words are an instrument.”
Nemesis uses her voice as well, matching it to the words and the beats, ranging from almost gravelly low up toward soprano.
She aspires to “entertain and uplift.” Hip hop, she says, started out as peace, love and creativity but has deteriorated into sex, drugs and violence.
“And I don’t advocate that because I come from these places. I see a whole different story. I see that the people that I’m around, myself included, have been excellent citizens and have loved life and have upbuilt others, and yet we’re being depicted as if there has only been sex, drugs and violence. That view is so skewed that it moved me to speak up.”
She means speaking up through entertainment, through her music, “without being preachy.”
“What I’m doing is branching away from that without rebelling against it. It’s just offering another alternative.”
From “Vibe Flow”:
Outside on the westside feeling sensational
Ready to keep the plan moving motivational
Kick grammatic styles they say is untraceable
Just tryin’ to spit what’s good the hood is educational
“Vibe Flow” is her fifth solo single. She has a body of music as part of the rap duo Pure Order. She began putting out music in 2017 and was, like about everyone else, sidelined by the Covid pandemic. Now she’s back.
In addition to her positive messaging, she urges music fans to support independent artists because, “They’re professionals, too, and they’re usually more talented just because they’re working for their own creativity and not that of a big label.”
She has more music coming, both with Pure Order and solo. A Pure Order album will drop this year, and she will put out her own LP, which will include “Vibe Flow.” The LP is scheduled to come out in the fall.
She wants to take her music as far as she can “and share this vibe of positivity and happiness everywhere through hip hop and entertainment.”
“I would love to have my album direct attention to this style that I do,” she said. “I want to do this for the love of it, but I do see the potential in it, and I want it to go as far as it can.”
Feel the vibe and connect with Nemesis on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.
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