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  • Genre:

    Electronic / Experimental

  • Label:

    Fada

  • Reviewed:

    January 30, 2025

One of footwork’s most exciting new artists, the Tunisian producer amasses starkly contrasting samples—trap, jazz, synth pop, lounge, video games—for a hyperactive record with a sharp sense of humor.

For a producer fascinated by the sound of ’70s soul records, Tunisia’s Khadija al Hanafi crafts footwork albums that distinctly reflect the fragmented feeling of being alive and online in the present. !OK!, the feature-length follow-up to her twin Slime Patrol tapes, uses its extended runtime to intensify al Hanafi’s already hyperactive sequencing, simulating the trance-like sensation of locking into an endless vertical scroll. Maintaining a steady 160 bpm pulse, she speeds through 20 tracks in just over 34 minutes, eschewing club music’s traditional build-ups and cooldowns to chain climax after climax. Even compared to the madcap sampledelia of her earlier work, !OK! is a constant stream of stimulation, pouncing on each opportunity to fuse a new, strange combination of samples from al Hanafi’s deep crates.

Al Hanafi’s debut bears the influence of trips she’d take to France to visit her aunt, who lived above a record store. Because al Hanafi didn’t own a turntable, she developed a roundabout sample-hunting method, snapping photos of cool-looking LPs to listen to on her phone later. The sound of Slime Patrol reflects this exchange between physical and digital worlds. Muffled mixing and jazzy instrumentation evoke the feeling of dropping the needle on a rare slab, while her affection for Atlanta trap a capellas and Nintendo DS soundtracks fold in her childhood fixations. Much of the appeal of Slime Patrol stemmed from this time-warping, and while the stylish retrofuturism remains intact on !OK!, al Hanafi uses it as a foundation for greater compositional experimentation. She flickers the volume of melodies on and off to conjure sensations of weightlessness on tracks like “Roll Up (Lemme Show You)” and “Miss Him (Ma Baby).” A surprising use of jungle breaks makes “Borders” an exuberant experience. The bleeping, ringtone-era synth work on “Bounce It on the Flo” cuts through the mix to signal that al Hanafi’s taking a stab at juke traditionalism for two minutes of pure adrenaline. Each transition between tracks is a new opportunity to catch listeners completely off guard.

On “Bad Bitch on Your Side,” al Hanafi uses soft 808 tom drums to glue disparate yet surprisingly complementary pieces together. Vivisected bits of electric keyboard overlap to form impressionistic clusters of harmony. Two vocal samples—a line sourced from Nicki Minaj’s Call of Duty: Warzone skin and a pitched-up excerpt from the late Unk’s “Walk It Out”—converse over the elegant backdrop, creating an atmosphere that’s both bratty and baroque. The track is conducive to frenetic dancing, but it’s just as suitable for falling back onto the sofa as rippling arpeggios permeate the room. Al Hanafi’s use of starkly contrasting layers makes each listen feel like staring at a magic eye puzzle: just shifting your focus between frequencies can ratchet up the adrenaline or help you unwind.

Al Hanafi’s sense of humor, which shone through in the cognitive dissonance of fusing Waka Flocka Flame ad-libs with sultry slow jam ambiance, is sharper than ever. !OK!’s raunchiest song, “Eat That Pussy,” makes its references to analingus, clipped from KenTheMan’s “No Panties,” feel downright quotidian when backed by looped Muzak. It’s a long elevator ride to the top floor soundtracked by a hopped-up horndog’s intercom rant: terrifying in theory, but hilarious in practice. “Outro (Crybaby)” samples a 15-year-old YouTube upload of a baby’s shrieks filtered through Auto-Tune, turning a crusty meme into a weirdly affecting New Jack Swing-influenced coda to the album. Decorated with plinking keys, the track ushers the listener back into the world born anew with a syncretic sense of nostalgia. The distinctions blur between deep-fried image macros, vintage lounge records, and ’80s synth pop, all of it coalescing into a glitching mass of memory.

While !OK! maintains the lo-fi palette of Khadija al Hanafi’s Slime Patrol series, her latest record doubles down on the idiosyncrasies that have made her one of contemporary footwork’s most exciting new faces. Its greater length allows her imagination to run wild, bouncing from one reference to the next with little regard for genre or cultural eras. The world of !OK! is pixelated, yet analog; retro, but online. Its contradictions make it all the more compelling.