DJ, producer, remixer, rapper and singer Yaeji is on a mission to destroy limitations. Hammer in hand on her debut album proper, she targets everything from Asian American stereotypes to her own self-limiting holdovers, all the while retaining the more nourishing parts of her family’s culture. The NYC-based Korean-American continues to swap between Korean and English in her singsong delivery; two previously released tracks, For Granted and Done (Let’s Get It), take her work notably pop-wards.
Yaeji began as a creature of the dancefloor, moving from left-field bangers into the dreamier, more insular headspace of her mixtape What We Drew (2020). While the textures and rhythms of With a Hammer remain the work of the same producer, this 13-track album is a more emphatic, even angry work charting her emotional evolution.
While little here is club-facing, beats remain a key feature, ranging from rageful drum’n’bass breakdowns to the deft-footed time signatures around the album’s two-thirds mark, via the boxy, live-sounding breakbeats of Passed Me By. Hand in hand with Yaeji’s ambitious candour is a broadened set of sounds. Submerge FM starts with graceful flute and woodwind sounds, while a beautiful sax line heralds the start of I’ll Remember for Me, I’ll Remember for You.
