My Luv Notes “Snake Charmer” (single)

My Luv Notes wastes no time in trapping us with her sublime serenade in the new single “Snake Charmer,” one of the cornerstone tracks from her second album Day Late, and in less than four minutes she manages to leave everyone within earshot of her harmonies weak at the knees and begging for more. We begin in darkness, alone with a pungi’s mesmerizing melody before it is met with an oozing, overdriven bass near the five-second mark in the song. The verses slip from My Luv Notes’ lips effortlessly, as though she were channeling some sort of divine being not of this world. Her attitude is swaggering, her voice dripping with ferocious confidence, but this opening salvo is only a small sampling of the vocal virtuosity that awaits us as we press on in the track.

The first chorus is reminiscent of a Fugees b-side, but My Luv Notes doesn’t even come close to recycling anything from the past in this single. There’s a pop hook beneath all of the distortion in the bassline, but it’s not so sharp that it pulls our attention away from the fluidity of the lyrical execution, which is as close to hip-hop as this artist has ever come. Her flow is startlingly strong, and even though I’ve been following her music for the last few years, I had no idea that her rapping skills were as excellent as they would appear to be in “Snake Charmer.” It’s not a straight-up rap track, but it’s definitely close enough for my standards.

SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/album/3H7MahXOOKMStvn5gJNQU2

Even though the instrumentation gets a little overly synthetic towards the finish line, I see what My Luv Notes was trying to do with this melody. By slowly washing all of the color out of the backdrop, we become vulnerable to the churn of the percussion, and more importantly, the cutting tonality of the lead vocal, which never fails to steal all of the thunder away from the other elements in this single. At the end of the day, she’s using minimalism to yield a fascinating contrast that makes “Snake Charmer” instantly recognizable, as well as an aesthetical antithesis of the stagnant, predictably soft mainstream content that it’s going up against on the charts this summer.

“Snake Charmer” concludes with as much mystique as it starts off with, and as much as I enjoyed the other material that My Luv Notes shares on Day Late, I think that this is absolutely the most sterling effort of anything you’ll hear on the album. It’s certainly a lot more stimulating than anything she released last year, and that’s saying something when taking into consideration the quality of what she produced in 2018. My Luv Notes has become one of the most widely discussed artists in her scene lately, and you needn’t give this song much more than a cursory listen to completely understand why. She’s getting better with time, and at the rate she’s going now, she’s going to be one of the hottest contenders in the American underground come 2020 and beyond.

Mark Druery

The music of MY LUV NOTES has been heard all over the world due to the radio plugging services offered by Musik and Film Records. Learn more – https://musikandfilm.com