Emi Wes refuses to fit into someone else's mould on the sophisticated "Get That"

After flexing her soulful tones on her genre-bending debut EP Departure last year, Emi Wes melds orchestral instrumentation with rap-style affirmations on her first outing of 2021, "Get That".

The pulsing orchestral strings provide a near-punchy backdrop for Emi Wes’ honeyed vocals, as she issues statements about not wanting to "be on the radio" or on "your fucking blog". She juxtaposes the blunt lyrics with a lighter, soothing vocal delivery, but ultimately Wes is standing her ground and refusing to be shaped into a mould that isn't herself.

Once her opening statements have been delivered, the orchestral instrumentation melts away to unveil a sparse keys melody. Wes delivers positive self-empowerment lyrics about getting what she wants in a soft rap style-delivery, before unleashing her Greentea Peng-esque, soul-infused tone over mellow instrumentation that would sound right at home on Noname’s Room 25 album.

The new single is once again produced by Robin Hannibal (Kendrick Lamar, Little Dragon). Wes explains, "Written as my most anti-self. Feeling that I had a hard time fitting in. Every session I had, and most of the people I met, before meeting Robin Hannibal, was older men looking at Top 40 and generic songs on Spotify, with an insane amount of plays, trying to make me match things that were already done and not me. It made me feel that what I was bringing to the table didn’t really matter. It made me angry and made me promise myself to never work with people who are blocking your initial creativity - "there’s no way I’m gonna work for the man, and follow all of his plans"."

"Also I wanted it to be possible for young women to be vocally direct and to dream about success, financial stability and material wishes," the Danish singer/songwriter adds. "I grew up listening to rappers being vocal about this. Somehow it wasn’t as easy for me to be as direct and provocative on those subjects. I’m happy that there’s a shift in time, in that sense, on how women "should" or "shouldn’t" say or behave. It was amazingly liberating for me to list material things that I also have hopes for in the future. In that sense it’s a manifestation."