Review: Meyniak: The Werther Effect.

I Hope You Kill Yourself.

It’s been a minute since I listened to any new Zimbabwean rap. That has changed recently, as there has been a little movement on the scene, with Alpha Centauri rebooting his Centauri Saturdays drops and a few other moves. One of my favourite drops is the one I’m reviewing now. Meyniak’s “The Werther Effect”.

Firstly, the beat!

I love the beat on this tune. It’s the type of beat that resonates with me, especially at a time when everything is 808s and too much mumbling on beats. While I enjoy listening to Future Hendrix just as much as the next guy, I’m a big fan of beats that don’t take precedence over, y’know, rapping. So I’m glad Meyniak went for this beat. Question is, was it the right choice? Well, yes. It was, because Meyniak can rap, and can do so quite well!

So, what’s The Werther Effect anyway?

While I’d like to claim I had a clue what this was, I really had no idea what Meyniak was on about with the title of this track. A quick Google search (and a glance at the helpful material he sent through to the blog) gave me the info I needed. Simply put:

“A spike of emulation suicides after a widely publicized suicide is known as the Werther effect, following Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. The well-known suicide serves as a model, in the absence of protective factors, for the next suicide.” – Wikipedia. (Don’t do your college assignments with this as a source. Please I beg you).

Interesting. That quick search gave me the context I needed to give Meyniak’s raps the appropriate degree of attention. It’s certainly an interesting topic for a tune, and one that deserves more treatment, especially from an African perspective. We treat suicide and depression like they’re the reserves of demonic presences. This is obviously untrue, and I’m glad someone from Zimbabwe’s rap scene decided to discuss it in his own way.

Meyniak does away with intensive rhyming and patterns on this one, instead opting for simple, meaningful and accessible lyrics and a flow that sits well with the beat. There are no insane quotables here, and the flow and lyrics match the melancholic tone of the tune as a whole. If the idea was to deliver a sombre look at the psyche of someone going through depression and the thoughts that fill up one’s head at that point, then Meyniak has achieved his goal.

It’s also well-produced. This isn’t usual.

While I’d like to say Zimbabwean artists put out consistently great-sounding work, they just don’t. The mixing is almost always off in favour of the beat, and there is almost always volume fluctuation. It’s weird and annoying, especially if it’s coming from someone who claims to be a full time rapper. I don’t know if rapping is Meyniak’s only hustle, but I will say that his tune shows that he cares about how he sounds. He’s one of a very small group (including the like of Simba Tagz, Kapital K, Alpha Centauri and ASAPH) who have figured out how to make music sound good on a wide variety of audio outputs. Most of the others just haven’t, sadly.

Okay so what’s the deal here? Good or Nah?

I like it! It won’t be a smash or anything because it isn’t jumpy hoppy music, but as at the time of writing, it has a decent (for Zimbabwean Hip Hop) amount of plays on SoundCloud. I enjoy mellow, pensive music, and this tune fits right into the Lens Blur African Hip Hop Playlist which we started a while ago, and has been growing slowly. Will it make it onto my playlist? Probably not, but that’s because I can’t stream it off of Google Play. Enjoyable tune!

There’s an E.P coming too.

I’m kind of interested in what Meyniak is doing. He has an E.P coming, that’s eerily titled “Suicidal Ideation: Ideation”, and slated for a May 2016 release. If, like me, you’re interested in that project, hit Meyniak’s e-mail, meyniakmusic@gmail.com. Otherwise, follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

Listen to Meyniak’s “The Werther Effect” below!