On the eve of Penn’s pre–finals obligatory reading days, I got my chest crushed at Franklin Music Hall’s barricade instead of sitting by a Van Pelt–Dietrich Library carrel, and all I got were these lousy bruised ribs. I have no regrets having spent my evening with fakemink, a rapper whose music—often described as a softer version of jerk rap inspired by Dean Blunt—has come to define my cram sessions. I was practically studying, anyway.
The people in line outside of the venue give me my first real glimpse into fakemink’s audience. I meet four people who I’ll end up sticking with throughout the concert: three Temple University students and a first–year medical student from New Jersey. We are all different but mesh well, and I’m still wondering if the group would be a dream or nightmare blunt rotation. We pass the time by playing Impostor and chatting about the songs we are most excited to hear live. We throw around some lesser–known titles like “Look at Me” and “Receipt,” as well as popular ones like “Blow Me.” It‘s refreshing being able to talk about his well–known songs without getting hit with the classic name–five–songs line, because it would be criminal to say I‘m not excited to hear “Music and Me,” one of his most viral songs, live.
Online, you can’t mention any of his top 10 most streamed songs without being called a “newgen,” a word reserved for casual listeners of popular songs. To try and gatekeep an artist whose biggest song has amassed over 184 million plays borders on absurd, especially when fakemink seems far less interested in the spectacle. For all the online posturing that is projected onto him, he’s still a guy from Essex who, at ten years old, had a YouTube channel where he was staging 3 a.m. calls with Boss Baby.
He opens the show with “Easter Pink”, a high–energy fan favorite, and greets the crowd with the typical “How you feeling, Philly?”, dancing across the stage and doing a shimmy I recognize from a clip of his Coachella set. He moves quickly through more of his upbeat songs before coming to a slight halt as the piano instrumental of “Face to Face” comes on, which my friend once likened to “Undertale music, but in a good way.” He tells the crowd to put their phones down and be present in the moment, a sentiment he’d repeat throughout the rest of the show.
For someone who claims that he’d rather use his free time watching The Simpsons with his brother at his family home, fakemink‘s lyrics have a veil of self–indulgence that can’t be ignored. He name–drops high fashion brands like Ann Demeulemeester and Alexander McQueen, and his lyrics are riddled with references to drugs. His music and the culture surrounding it are defined by a hedonistic lifestyle, filled with images of models, men wearing polo shirts with Maison Margiela GAT sneakers (which fakemink himself wore on stage), and the cityscape of midtown Manhattan. Somewhere along the way, he was appointed patron saint of cultivated cool, becoming the soundtrack for countless TikToks that embody the culture described.
The show—unlike most modern concerts—has no ridiculous visuals apart from smoke and strobe lights. It feels like an underground show I could have attended in a basement somewhere in my hometown. Sitting center stage is a platform that the rapper sits on during the outros of his songs. He puts his head in his hands, a pose he’s often seen doing both onstage and on Instagram. It’s a part of the persona he puts on.
During “Snow White,” a song characterized by a looping guitar solo and its hazy atmosphere, the performance softens amidst all of the cheering and yelling. Fakemink perches himself up on the steps of the stage and looks out into the crowd during an instrumental interlude, with a pensiveness that feels unperformed. We make brief eye contact, and he appears to be one of the most present–in–the–moment artists I’ve seen in concert. He nods his head to the guitar rhythm of the song and snaps back into character to perform the last chorus.
As I wait for my Uber on the corner of 7th and Callowhill streets, there’s a truth that looms before me: fakemink may, in fact, be the artist he claims to be, and he isn’t exactly wrong to refer to himself as “London’s Saviour.” He says that he keeps the title—despite being from Essex—because no one has challenged him for it yet. He wanted to see the music coming out of the city to change, so he took the task upon himself. As we await the release of his second album, Terrified, I’m confident that he’ll remain unopposed.
