Move Like: Bad Royale’s new EP

If you like the reggae instrumentals of Bob Marley set against the fast-paced, bass-heavy electronic music put out by Baaeur, you’ll love Bad Royale’s new EP, Move Like, which came out earlier today on Mad Decent. 

The four mystery friends described themselves as “three producers and an idiot travelling through space & time fighting evil with lazers”, as their Soundcloud profile discloses. Unbeknown to the internet, Bad Royale experimented and turned out an amazing album that combined musical influences like dubstep, moombahton andr eggae.

I first heard the preview put out on Soundcloud by Mad Decent, and have since been counting down the days until the full album would drop.

They may have started emerging on people’s radars with their release of “Champagne“, an intense song that quickly turns light and playful, or their remixes of RL Grimes’ “Kingpin” or Major Lazer’s “Wind Up“.

Bad Royale has managed to self-establish a new genre of music, dubbed “kingstep,” incorporating elements of “dubstep, grime, dancehall, reggae, moombahton, and Jamaican hip-hop,” as the Mad Decent description lists.

This EP features artists like Richie Loop and Dominique Young Unique, and Mad Decent swears that it will have you wanting to “moshpit in the middle of the street, turn a dance floor inside out and hunt sharks with machine guns from outer space, all at the same time.”

“Move Like”, featuring Richie Loop, is what would get people off their butts at a party. The DJ slips this Jamaican-influenced song on, and people would immediately start grabbing their friends to go up and dance. The slow progress starts to build as Bad Royale slowly adds layers and layers of voice and bass, right until the bass drops.

Dominique Young Unique, model turned rapper, slays in “POP”, in which she draws you in with “meet me on the dancefloor, bitch, I pop bottles”. Her rap style is a unique cross between that of MIA and Missy Elliott. This song is sexy and the drops are phenomenal.

In “Alarm,” Bunji Garlin and Marq Pierre create a song that would get a crowd full of slow grinders to erupt into wild dance. Bad Royale kicks it up a notch with a few precious seconds of drawn-out bass towards the middle (1:45) before Garlin and Pierre’s voices seep back in.

Garlin, a Trinidadian artist, specializes in ragga, a cross between reggae and electronic music, with a dash of hip hop. He also draws lots of influence from soca, a Caribbean-inspired combination of funk and soul set against loud, fast percussion. Think: Baha Men with synth.

“One Puff” is an honest-to-God flirtatious song about getting high. “So give me one puff of the marijuana”, a voice coaxes. The song builds and builds until someone yells, “puff it, puff it”, and then there’s a quick cough before the song launches down into a heavy drop. The second drop holds off for a quick second before swiftly coming back with full force.

“Superman” is the perfect anthem for the hero that seems to always be jamming out to his headphones. The moombahton beat quickly turns you into a dance animal, and the drop is comically preceded by the phrase cried out by Richie Loop: “Aw, fuck it!”