Image from Pretty V's "Alyx on My Balenci" music video
Some days, I wake up and check for fresh tunes from Pretty V the way you might consult the weather app or read the news. The British rapper/instrumentalist seems to record and release songs entirely on a whim, liable to drop a track or five any day of the week. And I’m never entirely sure what I’ll be getting into when I hit play: it could be a hazy Main Attrakionz vibe or an electronic club thumper, lo-fi ambient or a chaotic cacophony.
On last year’s mixtape Swaggittarius, V could veer from Bear1boss swag rap (“Miley Gomez”) to earnest balladry over shimmering guitars fit for NSYNC (“Lame”). But his singles discography is even more wide-ranging than that contrast might suggest, encompassing digital woodwind experiments and jittery digicore-adjacent sounds alike. If there is a unifying thread through the Wakefield, England, musician’s discography, it is his affinity for the unpolished and instinctual; even his more convoluted songs feel spry and spontaneous.
“I release every single on the same night [that] I make it. And then, later, [I] weave the tracks that I’ve made that week into a full project,” Pretty V said in an interview last fall. And like a growing number of young rappers from J.P. to Lazer Dim 700, he cuts most of his tracks on his phone. Whether the end product comes across like a hastily scribbled sketch or an ultraHD documentary snippet, they always feel intimate, like we’re following V around in real-time.
Pretty V, who sometimes records under the aliases Smokesito, Voldy Moyo and v7backin2007, has had this off-kilter approach to rapping and recording for a couple of years now. Last January, he earned a bit of wider exposure thanks to a brief experimental EP in collaboration with Jadasea and Archy Marshall, a.k.a. King Krule. “He wants to not just make music, but transcend into something else, like theater,” Marshall said of working with V. “Or maybe it’s just being young, being obsessed with iconography and creating icons. He wants to become an icon…”
Accordingly, Pretty V announced his “last album ever” Destiny of Illusion earlier this month (nothing more iconic than going out on your own terms). Fans on social media appear to be taking “last” with a grain of salt — he’s “retired” before — but I wouldn’t exactly say V is lying about the desire to leave music behind: every once in a while, I’ll find that a single or mixtape has vanished from my Spotify library, pulled down off DSPs. Sometimes it’s just a personal favorite solo cut, but he’s taken down some of his biggest streaming tracks with King Krule before too. He usually ends up reuploading them, but this mercurial un-release schedule implicitly pushes fans to become archivists of his work, or at the very least, be as present as they can while the music plays.
So far in 2024, Pretty V has dropped the short mixtape Dayinthelife and roughly 85 singles. That’s just on Spotify — he’s naturally dropped plenty of SoundCloud exclusives besides. Here are a handful of his best releases of the year to date. Odds are by the time you read this, he’ll have put out another tune or twelve.
"Alyx on My Balenci"
“I’m talking like that again / Yardie ting but she’s shaking in African / John F. Kennedy, bitch, I’m the president,” goes one inscrutably hard bar on “Alyx on my balenci.” A fizzy little loop courtesy of New York mainstay Laron swells in the background as Pretty V languidly details the designer clothes on his body, traces casual metaphors for his headstate and bank balance. As heady as the track can feel, Pretty V isn’t scared to shake up the proceedings, like when he snarls “homicide, homicide, shut the fuck up” midway through, sounding eerily like Playboi Carti.
"Rockstarsito"
The shimmering synth bed of “Rockstarsito” is as blissfully gauzy as its 808s are granola crunchy, deep fried into textural tempura. When I’ve got it blasting in the car or the AirPods, I swear I can feel the air vibrating against my eardrums trying to translate the blown-out low end. You can’t really tell, but Pretty V keeps chanting, “I’ve been a star forever.” His squeaky vocals are so low in the mix they’re almost a mirage, like trying to hear someone over a very bad phone connection. But somewhere in the melange of distortion and melody is an insistent, hooky core that makes this song stick in the brain.
"Heaven n el"
Have you ever had a relationship that was absolutely incredible — when you weren’t making each other feel like shit? Well, does Pretty V have a song for you: “Loving you, it’s like heaven and hell” goes the mantra. The beat, produced by CSupreme2, is a hulking, clipping mountain of noisily garbled soul, a little reminiscent of fellow Brit skaiwater. Pretty V’s autotune free association careens through the night. “I took her to the Hills / she was rockin Chanel / Free YSL,” he sighs. Being lonely and lovelorn never sounded so appealing.
"Yankeesito"
This song feels like a funhouse mirror reflection of sexy drill — imagine if Cash Cobain went on MTV Unplugged. But Pretty V is more of a romantic (“You really my twin, I’m really your bestie”) than a horndog, enamored with a lover’s smile and voice. “I like you! cuz I know that you get me,” he mutters over the pounding kick drum. “They wasn’t down for me when you was down for me.” It’s deceptively sweet for a song that knocks so hard.
"2gs"
What if RXKNephew freestyles over a jerk beat after watching the 2013 action-comedy movie Two Guns starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg?
"Ah wished upon a star"
The backbone of “Ah wished upon a star” is a sinuous synth line and soft chords, a plush backdrop for Pretty V to dream of success. His casual flow gently hops across the pocket of the beat, biting Lil Uzi Vert’s flow one moment, tossing off a couplet in French the next. “Feel like I’m in the Migos / cuz my bitch bad and boujee,” he grins near the song’s close. These allusions and interpolations are just a few of the woozy little fragments in Pretty V’s sonic scrapbook, carefully clipped and glued into place.
"Priceless"
The hyperactive synths on “Priceless” rush around like raindrops in a monsoon, a deluge of kinetic energy. Pretty V’s nightcored vocals are overlaid with a litany of stolen mixtape drops: EVIL EMPIRE, DJ Pharris, etc. Then everything rewinds slows to a crawl: “Putting on Celine / I feel like Justin Bieb, how I dunno what you mean / In a Bentley / Listening to Pretty V / In a Range Rover / TSssssssssssssssssss ” What could that drawn out onomatopoeia possibly represent? “That’s the ice and codeine,” Pretty V grins. It reminds me of Playboi Carti clinking the ice in a styrofoam at the start of “Foreign. Even months later, rinsing this tune out every week, I get a thrill from the tiny electric moments of “Priceless.”
Bonus lightning round picks
“Celine Jeans,” “Round Wings,” “Regular Show,” "Viens et vois,” “Shuffle,” “Luh Emo,” “Feeling.”
