After the tragic death of SOPHIE earlier this year, the Miami duo Basside wrote in memoriam that the artist “wasn’t from this planet.” They were far from the first to observe the galactic magic of SOPHIE’s music, but the phrasing hints at something that was always at its core. No matter how close SOPHIE songs approached the mainstream—whether on elastic tracks with Madonna or gleaming trap refractions with experimental rappers—the music had an otherworldly perspective, as if SOPHIE was hearing the sounds of pop’s past through interstellar radiation. SOPHIE’s catalog presented passage to new realms, where the music was a little more uncanny, more staticky, more absurd. Through SOPHIE’s music, as one of the songs implied, listeners could access a whole new world.
Basside—the duo of South Florida party-starters Que Linda and Caro Loka—got to experience this approach firsthand. SOPHIE caught one of their performances at a Miami music festival in 2016 and, taken by the way they channeled the vibrant histories of Miami Bass, freestyle, and East Coast club music, invited them out to Los Angeles, where they made the six songs that eventually ended up on the new EP Fuck It Up.
Over the years, the songs became staples of SOPHIE’s DJ sets, the sorts of elusive tracks that fans obsess over. But due to a miscommunication between the artists, the music never officially saw the light of day until after SOPHIE’s passing. Basside said in an interview they’re finally sharing Fuck It Up as “a gift to everyone that’s heartbroken,” and, at its best, it really does feel like one. Joyful, euphoric, and free, these new songs feel like a lot of SOPHIE’s best beats over the years, full of potential energy and the excitement of exploration.
Que Linda and Caro Loka’s work as Basside is charismatic and playful, full of hilarious come-ons and delirious sloganeering inspired by their city’s unapologetically horny musical history. (One memorable cheerleader chant from Basside’s debut EP goes, simply, “I like bass cause it has ass in it.”) They largely bring the same energy to Fuck It Up, but when paired with SOPHIE’s mystical production, it has a different effect. Opening track “NYC2MIA,” the EP’s easy standout, uses a hopscotching kick drum as the skeleton for a collection of surreal gulps and clangs and squeaks. As Que Linda and Caro Loka repeat one of their credos (“New York to Miami/No bras, no panties”), SOPHIE nods to the rhythmic histories of Jersey and Baltimore club while looking deep into the future, scribbling gnarled new sounds in all the margins.
Across the rest of the EP, they apply a similar approach to other sounds, like the boisterous party-trap of “Swipe” and the Auto-Tuned R&B balladry of “Girl.” Que Linda and Caro Loka’s bars are full of easy confidence and memorable one-liners, but they occasionally run into the problem that a lot of people do over SOPHIE beats. When something is as unearthly as the club mutations of “Crazy Expensive,” it’s hard for anyone, even rappers as magnetic as Basside, to keep up, they just become tiny human figures lost in an alien landscape. On the whole, Basside hold their own. It’s a tragedy they won’t be able to do more with SOPHIE at their side because together, all three artists feel in their element. Feet on the dancefloor, head in the clouds, together they dream of a world where the club is a little more wondrous, a little more strange.
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