BLU KOBINA, who KOBINA?

Sometimes you come across brilliance but for whatever reason your mind isn't ready for it yet. So when it comes back around into your life it hits you twice as hard. 

I discovered BLU KOBINA back in January of 2023 with Jury (2018) and it went right over my head like the idiot that I am. I came back to him earlier this year and found more songs that I liked but still blind to the art behind the music. 

This morning, God knows why, it has finally sunk in and now I have to go through his whole career as a musician. 

Dark, rich and full of nuanced autotuned vocals BLU KOBINA's trap is just something else. I've been going crazy all morning trying to find information on the artist. There is none. I followed him on Instagram and I have the theory that he's Canadian. But there is literally nothing besides the fact that he's called Seth.

Everything is done by this one dude. ALL OF IT. And nobody knows him. There are no interviews on his music, nothing. I can't believe it. For me, he's up there with the current best. The music sounds so much fuller than what you would expect from a home trap production. The layers to the main vocals and the backups, the instrumentals, all of it. 

His latest album, Wizard (2023) is a no-skip album. An absolute corker from start to finish. But I will say, you are not allowed to hit it off with such a banger as Angel X. What even is that? I tried to find the original song from which he sampled the female vocals but it was impossible. I went to YouTube, the place of answers and he had deactivated the comment section. It just makes everything even more appealing, the mystery of it. We love ourselves a dark king. 

Anyway, Angel X is like the abstract at the start of a dissertation paper. It's the bottled essence of the album's mood. Particularly, the harmonies he does with himself are very smartly crafted. Every layer of his own voice is stacked but each track has its unique autotuned twist to it, making it sound like different people all at once. The instrumental has a booming kick to it, an occasional deep bass string oozing in and out that sticks with you. The sampled elements of the song sound taken from traditional East Asian music (is my guess) which gives the whole tune a graceful and elegant spinal cord. Ten out of ten trap music.

Next album down the line, Slay Thy Demons (2022). Phwoa. He does one of those album transitions where one song (an interlude most likely) turns seamlessly into the next track. That's how the album starts and when he hits it off with that first beat in the album you feel it somewhere hidden inside your stomach. He takes the whole experience to an even darker place or deeper into your entrails with La Lune. He samples something which I know I know but I can't figure out what it is. [2h later]. I HAVE IT *manic laughter* It's the same sample as HAARPER's The Alchemist and the original is Fontane di Roma, p106:I. La fontana di Valle Giulia all'alba (the Ichiko Aoba version). That was going to annoy me so much if unsolved. BLU KOBINA uses a philarmonic orchestra version of the track. 

Okay because I could continue for ages I'm just going to highlight a few more. silk from Castle in the Woods (2021) because it's sexy as hell, burn the flowers (from that same album) because it's a little bit more upbeat and emo in a fun way. Carbon, a 2020 single, is very powerful as it plays with reverberation effects. It has a Travis Scott feel to it, which works very well with the instrumental. Wolf Blood is a single from 2019, that has a softer more melancholic rhythm to it. I understand that this might not be for everyone so this is an exclusive recommending for my sad homies.