Ookay, Veronica Bravo - dontwakemeup

Ookay will forever be the “Thief” guy to a lot of people, that one inescapable 2016 record, and the funny thing is he’s spent the years since quietly being a much more interesting producer than that single suggests. “dontwakemeup” pairs him with Veronica Bravo, and it’s a moodier, more emotional take on trap than the genre’s reputation for chest-beating would lead you to expect. The all-lowercase no-spaces title is doing some heavy lifting, signaling the bedroom-pop melancholy threaded through what’s underneath. Bravo’s vocal is half-asleep in the best way, drifting over a beat that hits hard but never loses its softness. That tension between the heavy low end and the tender topline is the whole appeal, and Ookay threads it without spilling into either corny ballad or generic festival trap. I went in with low expectations because the trap well has been poisoned by years of soundalikes, and this one actually held my attention all the way through. The drop is more of a sigh than a scream, which is a braver choice than it sounds. Proof there’s still life in a sound everybody wrote off. I’ll be revisiting this one, and I don’t say that about much trap anymore.

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