#Rap Blog: heartstopmiami and FearDorian’s interstellar plugg

Rap Blog is a weekly showcase of a standout rap song written by Vivian Medithi and Nadine Smith.

Of the new generation of beatmakers crafting high-pitched and hyperactive beats at the intersection of plugg music and sample drill, there are few as downright inventive as FearDorian, the eclectic producer behind beats for experimental hip-hop oddballs like Duwap Kaine, Polo Perks, and AyooLii. Though FearDorian often incorporates alt-rock samples and emo guitars, he distorts them beyond recognition, resulting in a woozy kaleidoscope of atmospheric textures and futuristic synthesizers.

On their new collaborative album K.A.S.O.B., FearDorian finds a fitting muse in 19-year-old rapper heartstopmiami, who spits in a slightly androgynous pitch-shifted flow. Heartstopmiami first caught my eye with unexpected album artwork — K.A.S.O.B. is her second project of 2023 to feature a character from ABC’s Lost on the cover — but the glittering and effervescent production grabbed my eardrums just as strongly. While Dorian has a fondness for bright sounds and colorful keys not unlike Pi’erre Bourne, she has a unique ability to chop samples into reverb fever dreams, like the shoegaze-y “INTOXICATED,” as hazy guitars and a distorted backbeat blend into thumping 808s. There’s a depressive sheen to the sampled voice crooning in the background, but heartstopmiami raps with a winking coyness, dropping bars that are often hilarious without calling attention to themselves: “Don’t call me a SoundCloud rapper, my shit on Apple and Spotify.”