“Karma” (feat. 2Rare) by Flau’jae

Getting a blossoming hip-hop career off the ground isn’t as easy as some might have you believe in 2023. You’ve got to have serious talent to even get your foot in the door, let alone acquire an audience promptly, and that’s long before getting a shot at the primetime. In her new single “Karma,” featuring 2Rare, Flau’jae puts everything she’s got into exhibiting her best skills for audiences to get acquainted with, and while hers isn’t the only interesting hip-hop track out this October, it’s become one of my personal favorites recently.

I didn’t find anything derivative in this beat; we’re not listening to a groove that’s been recycled from one coast to the other, nor does it ever feel like we’re listening to something that’s been reworked from another corner of the hip-hop universe. There’s an exceptionality to the sterling nature of the rhythm in the percussion here that I haven’t been able to get away from since first listening to “Karma,” and as much as I like Flau’jae’s talents on their own, they’re made all the more accessible to us through the prominent instrumental background she’s working with in this track.

There’s a sharper-than-usual feel to the bass in this song, but Flau’jae is careful to employ it only when necessary, after the forty-second mark in the track, there’s a lot more intensity to the lyrical delivery than there was early on in the first few verses of “Karma,” but this potent bassline makes it possible for the tempo transition to come off without a hitch. Some time and effort went into making everything about this single flow perfectly, and I think that’s probably pretty obvious to anyone who picks it up at the moment.

YOU TUBE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tyj47fDRVk

The cerebral lyricism in “Karma” alludes to their being a lot more of a surreal influence in this artist’s sound than would be cosmetically noticeable in this capacity. Flau’jae is coming out of the woodwork at a time when postmodernity is ruling supreme in the hip-hop community, but I don’t think she’s merely pursuing a trend in this song. She’s got too unique an approach to her content for that to be the case; even if she were interested in making a quick buck, I don’t believe she’d have put this much heart into the material at all.

Although she’s got competition coming at her from virtually every part of the earth right now, I think Flau’jae is one of the season’s best new finds for indie fans. “Karma” is an indie hip-hop anthem that doesn’t demand a lot out of us for the wealth of intrigue it can provide during any given listening session, and if it’s representative of who Flau’jae is going to be in the years ahead, it’s going to mark the start of a lot of good things for this artist’s moniker moving into the future. Whether you’ve heard her work before or not, this collaboration with 2Rare is worthy of a close inspection this autumn, and personally, I think we’ve only seen the start of what she can do when she sets her mind to something.

Anne Hollister

Anne Hollister

We do music reviews for Independent Artists and Publicists.