“Woman Photographer of the Year” was the first song I heard from Emmeline. The tense beat and urgent vocal, rapped and sung, pulled me right in. Thing is, I was driving when it came on. Even though I played it a couple of times to try to remember it, I forgot about it once I got where I was going. Anyway, check it out:

Then last week I heard the follow-up single, “Can’t Catch Me Now!”, and it all came back to me. It’s another intense track and the lyrics are full of Shakespeare, in the form of a long quote from the original, and references to Baz Luhrmann’s classic film adaptation.

I like to know about the people who make the music I listen to, and there is a lot to know about Emmeline. But first, here’s her latest single, it’s great:

Emmeline’s father is the UK Poet Laureate, and she’s had success as a poet and spoken word artist. I’m no expert at the medium, but it’s easy to see why this piece from 2017 won an award (also it’s wildly synchronous that I’m first hearing this as I’m reading Service by Sarah Gilmartin, which is about rape and power and takes place in 2017):

Aside from the intense and affecting theme and content, there are like a half-dozen literary devices in use there.

This profile in NME is full of interesting bits:

As the daughter of current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, she was encouraged by her parents to invest her time and energy in attending theatre groups.

“Music wasn’t in the picture until my late teenage years,” she says. As she picks at a slice of carrot cake in the bookshop’s cafe, she explains how, growing up as an only child, she was named in newspaper articles about her father, and attended his readings. “I was brought up in a home where I knew that being creative could be my career. It was ingrained in me that I had to take care of my creativity. I was fortunate to learn that,” she adds, truthfully, aware of the privilege that comes with having a parent who has succeeded in a creative industry.

Anyway, her music. Emmeline has been releasing music since 2022, and you can hear the evolution in her sound and her confidence as a lyricist. Her early singles were soft-voiced with minimal production. This is “Stay with Me”, from her first EP, Satellite Navigation System:

She’s grown as an artist and performer since then, with more ambitious production, more singing and somehow more complexity. The 2023 EP Small Town Girls and Soft Summer Nights is a little closer to what might be considered conventional hip-hop (in the vein of PM Dawn, maybe).

Early this year, Emmeline began the run of singles for the upcoming album, and she has taken another bold step here:

That moody and atmospheric trip-hop style is perfectly suited to her vocal style. Her delivery is more fierce, and her voice has more character and emotion. Her lyrics are even more political, topical and provocative. Here’s the other single from the new record, called “Night Rider”, with some nerdy literary references (Murakami, and I’m guessing Animals, Bishop):

Her record Shapes, Shadows, DVDs is being released next month, these four tracks are on it, with four more including one titled “If My Life Was a Movie Produced by A24” which sounds like appointment listening.

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