FakeMink Terrified Album Review (NICO RETURNS)

When we covered the show at the cause last year, a week after LV Sandals came out, we predicted the invasion of the UK underground into the mainstream. A year on, we have seen the mixed results of this success, epitomised in the success and unsuccess of Essdeekid post-Capitol records deal, and here with this alternately banging and uncertain, slightly pretentious release from Fakemink. We can hope for a British invasion, but we have to fear the possibility that Britain becomes a site of cultural extraction in service of the empty American imperial core.

Thank god we have Teo to guide us. Find here, the return of our high school music reporter. Here he dishes his opinions, as the superstar does: with panaché and natural online research-habitus.

Terrified is fakemink’s synthesis of the terror beneath the pride with which he lives his self-prophesied life. The Essex boy faked it till he made it; the fantasies of Hollywood and fragrances he seduced my generation with are real now.

Between the opening instrumental and spoken-word finale, he revisits his older sound – hazy beats, ranty verses and hypnotically jarring hooks – but with a confidence that was absent from the angst-punctuated songs he blew-up with. Retard Angel drowns a Tirzah sample under, like, a million layers of effects and bass; the haunted trap beat on Wrong Relief feels terrifying after the danceable fyp anthem Night, Blooming Jasmine (not-so-politely taking its name from Lynch’s grave); and 51 Ttashpel Pony Ave proudly recalls the jerk-beats the rapper used to release in industrial quantities. But underlying the aesthetic sensibility and chaos that mark the prodigal rapper so distinctly is an eerie feeling of fame-induced apathy. His unrelenting flex of having “lived out the chateau” testifies the extent to which he has been consumed by the LA lifestyle.

The occasional confessions, “Miss Marmont driving me crazy” and “fuck Sunset, really miss Mayfair” remind us of how distant the London Saviour has become. Essdeekid got an eye-watering deal when he entered the LA Capital Records deathstar and his music payed the price. He was immediately paired to prop up the acts of yesteryear aka. the floundering Yeat, dropping a god-awful track from a Rap Caviar type producer. Almost instantly, the vitality of his image became like the hair care gummies plugged by an ex-love island reality tv star. It’s a cautionary tale that Mink has yet avoided, but still creates a bad taste in the mouth by association. Indeed, there is a jarring contrast between the phone scrolling in a dark room night-time feel of Mink’s music and the much-publicised awkwardness of his bright sun-lit performances on the post-millennial mainstream festival circuit. How long does it take to get back from Rolling Loud to London Fields?

With Terrified, fakemink tries to evolve beyond the single, which he has mastered over the last 2 years, and arrives at a broader scale of storytelling - one which fakemink places Victoria Davidoff at the centre of. The 9-fingered Soundcloud princess clutching a pole and hiding behind the curtains of Chateau Marmont in the cover is a muse in fakemink’s tragedy. Her demented dance and grin at the end of the Like A Virgin music video reminds me of the Virgin in Jean-Luc Godard’s Hail Mary, who achieves liberation and transgression in the final scene by putting on lipstick. Victoria is a figure of fantasy in his Mulholland Drive-esque dream, and like Dante’s Beatrice, a remote crush deeply written into his lament.

It’s no surprise the self-proclaimed genius has directly named Lynch and Dante’s Inferno as inspirations. Comparisons are certainly not warranted, but they signify fakemink’s ambition which, much like the album, treads thin ice between visionary talent and self-indulged redundancy. It feels like fakemink has a tendency to be infatuated with things he can’t quite grasp, whether it be art, fame, Victoria Davidoff or himself. This perplexity is glaring on the sadistically titled Retard Angel, perhaps the most discordant moment on the album narrating a love story turned rotten as mink cries foul play.

Despite his claim that the tracklist simulates Dante’s Divine Comedy, beginning in hell (lustful subject matter etc.) and resolving in enlightenment (naively signified by the erasure of low frequencies and drums), the conflict at the core of terrified is not so easily resolved. The final song “Etna .” replaces Enzo’s bars with Victoria Davidoff’s uncanny attempt at a British accent, who warily considers:

“So here we are, a little older, a little wiser, and slightly embarrassed about the theatrics, but alive, which all things considered is not a bad outcome right?”

You wonder how self aware fakemink is of his own image, to invite both a muse and a creative director to collaborate with him so closely on an album that de facto ends up hiding its more thoughtful, introspective poetry behind her mystique. While hits scattered across the tracklist recall the swag the savant-level rapper bulldozed into the scene with, it feels like fakemink is asking himself questions he can’t answer as he takes a hubristic leap and, in the end, finds himself stuck mid-air.