Xhaling Emotions –  REEM IIDOL (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Reem is telling it like it is. One of the great things about rap music is that it looks you in the eye, shoots from the hip and draws first, firing off salvos of reality, truth bullets packet with explosive honesty. But what do you do when it’s those closest to you that are the jealous ones, when people let you down, when friends are turning their back on you or trying to hold you back. Well, what you do is pull out your best rhymes and turn your feelings into music.

Opening track Changes mixes spoken word and flowing rap deliveries and driving it on skittering trap percussion and a confident beats, and that sets the pace for the album as a whole. Throughout it Reem waxes lyrical about loyalty, honesty, reality and the fact that the world is a tough place and sometimes you have to accept that fear is stronger than love if you want to survive. Xhaling Emotions is a collection of gritty narratives that follow his life and world views, his hopes and aspirations. 

It is an addictive combination of hypnotic vocal delivery and trippy accessibility which really moves the ball forward, breaks out of the comfort zones and offers a new take on an old sound. It is the perfect eulogy for the streets, the hustle, the hassle, the grime and the game, it plays to stereotypical images but it drips with dark reality. If ever rap music spoke of the lives and aspirations of the young urban experience, this is where it is said most eloquently in raps own, new first language.