Enya, the Irish singer known for her ethereal music, has shocked fans with the announcement that she is moving away from her usual sound to experiment with triplet rap flows. Her new mixtape, ‘Old Red Moon’, takes inspiration from the Southern rap scene in Atlanta, which she encountered during a recent visit to the city’s infamous Magic City strip club.
The lead single, ‘Waka Flocka Flow’, is a trap-style cover of her hit 1988 single ‘Orinoco Flow’. It features Lil Yachty freestyling around the famous refrain, “sail away, sail away”. Other tracks on the mixtape include ‘Doneballin”, ‘Celtic Crack Clan (feat. Quavo)’, and a diss track directed at the Catholic church, ‘Solidarity with Shuhada’ Sadaqat’, which samples the music of late Irish musician Sinead O’Connor.
Enya’s last album was released in 2015, and hints of new music have been coming through for a while. Her sister, Moya Brennan, revealed in 2019 that new music was in the works, however, the stylistic pivot has come as a surprise to many fans.
The full mixtape will drop via datpiff this week, and Enya has revealed that another musical left-turn inspired her to make this drastic change. In a press release, she joked “I’m like the anti-André 3000. While he’s been inhaling incense and performing fellatio on flutes, I’ve been racking up Cash Money streams and booty-shaking to Bubba Sparxxx.” She urges fans to keep an open mind, saying “Southern Ireland got something to say, that’s all I got to say.”
Enya’s experiment with rap flows has divided opinions, with some fans welcoming the change and others disappointed that she has abandoned her signature sound. Nonetheless, she remains an influential artist in the music industry, and her move into the world of rap is sure to generate curiosity and interest among both fans and critics.
Fee Stax, Mixmag’s cross-culture correspondent, reports on this latest development in the music world
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