<\/p>\n
In March of this year, we published <\/span>fakemink<\/span><\/a>\u2019s first-ever Dazed <\/span>cover story<\/span><\/a>. Meeting the UK Ug paragon in a high-end sushi restaurant and closing with him greeting fans in the doorway of Selfridges, the interview was a sprawling, two-and-a-half-hour conversation that saw mink play me early demos of his upcoming album, <\/span>Terrified<\/span><\/em>, and explain some of its themes. Sadly, due to the word constraints of print media, much of the conversation was left buried on my hard drive\u2026 until now.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n His first full-length project since the slow burn album <\/span>London\u2019s Saviour <\/span><\/em>dropped back in 2023, and his first since exploding in popularity at the start of 2025, <\/span>Terrified <\/span><\/em>has been highly anticipated ever since cryptic hints first started popping up on his Instagram captions towards the end of last year. Even two days out from the release date, however, very little is known about the album. In our cover story, mink describes <\/span>Terrified<\/span><\/em> as \u201clo-fi hip-hop if it was played on the radio\u201d and hinted that the project will follow an eerie, horror narrative set in a \u201ccold mansion in LA\u201d \u2013 complete with a short story written by his close friend and fellow artist GhostInnaFurCoat. But there\u2019s much more that never went to print.<\/span><\/p>\n Below, we drop five previously unpublished hints fakemink gave us about the project back in January of this year, from its \u201csecret feature\u201d (Drake?), inspirations from UK drill, and more.<\/span><\/p>\n While playing me scattered tracks from the album directly into my AirPods, mink abruptly paused a melodic cloud rap song with bassline-influenced production halfway through<\/span><\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n fakemink: <\/strong>This one has a secret feature that I can\u2019t share yet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [fakemink gestures at his manager across the table]\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n fakemink: <\/strong>Even he hasn\u2019t heard it.<\/span><\/p>\n After finishing the early run-through of the project, I remarked that his vocals remind me of how UK drill artists use melodies.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n fakemink: <\/strong>Yeah, when I was doing <\/span>London\u2019s Saviour<\/span><\/em>, I used to listen to a lot of grime, like a lot of Skepta and JME. But, now, it\u2019s just been drill. That 2018-2020 era drill is nostalgic to me \u2013 it reminds me of when I was in secondary school. I love UK drill. Some songs are just undeniably catchy; the melodies are like a pop song. It\u2019s just their own melodies.<\/span><\/p>\n What sort of songs?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n fakemink: <\/strong>You know \u201cPCD On The Mains\u201d by 67? To me, that\u2019s like the peak time. The drums… There\u2019s a lot of UK drill that isn\u2019t just the standard sliding 808s. I feel like a lot of new UK drill gets boxed into this New York drill sound, but there are so many songs that have melodies that will go unheard by someone who only listens to a Zuko or a fakemink.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One person who\u2019s doing this very well is Sinn6r. Like, his subject matter isn\u2019t what drill rappers usually talk about, but they\u2019re the same cadences and flows as what he used to listen to growing up [adjusted] for a new, underground ear. People are like, \u2018Wow, this is so catchy\u2019, but if you used to listen to drill, you know the cadences.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Early in the interview, I asked fakemink how his life has changed since becoming famous.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n fakemink:<\/strong> I still sleep hella, I still leave things to the last minute. Like this album, <\/span>Terrified<\/em>, right? The concept of it has been two years in the making, but in terms of production and recording\u2026 From August, I did this mini tour, Toronto, New York and LA, and I didn\u2019t get home until 25th of November. All that time, I was in LA and New York and I wasn\u2019t recording much music, and none of it was for <\/span>Terrified<\/em>. But <\/span>Terrified<\/em> is about that time. I had to come back to England to be outside of that LA environment to be able to write about it. With my music, I care more about world building than anything else. I could have been in LA, recording songs about LA, but I felt like I had to be home so I could be bored and then try to remember like, \u2018Oh, what was LA like?\u2019 and rebuild it in my head.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So, it\u2019s shaped by your own mental state?<\/strong><\/p>\n fakemink: <\/strong>Yeah, it\u2019s not a true depiction of LA. It\u2019s more like an exaggerated version, like a really crude caricature of LA. What I\u2019m talking about is not, like, super on the nose. It\u2019s hard to explain without listening.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n fakemink spoke about how <\/span><\/em>Terrified <\/span>is all about his personal experiences, and I remarked that it\u2019s interesting how he trusted GhostInnaFurCoat to help express them.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n fakemink:<\/strong> Yeah, I\u2019ve known him since 2016 and he gave me the name for London\u2019s Saviour.<\/em>\u00a0He also did a lot of the song titles on <\/span>Terrified<\/span><\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n [mink pulls up the tracklist on his phone]<\/em><\/p>\n fakemink: <\/strong>So, I chose \u2018Terrified\u2019, \u2018Playlist\u2019, \u2018Creep\u2019 and \u2018Like A Virgin\u2019, but the rest are him. One thing I like doing is putting out titles of already existing songs, because \u2018Music And Me\u2019 is named after this Michael Jackson song of the same name.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While discussing competitivity in the UK underground, mink explained how he tries to be ahead of trends.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n fakemink:<\/strong> When it comes to making music that is ahead of trends, you just really have to trust your creative intuition. Have you ever seen a piece of clothing or a song and you\u2019re like, \u2018I thought of that first\u2019? I\u2019m sure it\u2019s a universal experience. Ideas are given to everybody; it\u2019s just whoever executes it first gets to claim it. Like with this whole nostalgia wave that has been happening \u2013 artists like Feng. Before Feng was even a thing, I knew there was going to be an artist who does this 2010 nostalgia thing, and I did it for a bit at the beginning of 2024, but now, that cycle has ended.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The point I\u2019m trying to make is that these ideas are in the ether, and then they go into some people\u2019s heads and maybe only one or two people execute them. So, when I see people like Feng doing what they\u2019re doing, I\u2019m like, \u2018Damn, I knew that was going to happen\u2019. It\u2019s all about trusting your creative intuition. So, with the stuff that I\u2019m gonna put out for <\/span>Terrified<\/span><\/em>, it\u2019s gonna sound super weird to people, but it will take time. The same way that <\/span>London\u2019s Saviour<\/span><\/em> took time for people to understand it. People are still finding <\/span>London\u2019s Saviour<\/span><\/em> today. To me, that project is dated but, to someone else, it\u2019s brand new.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n