5 musicians and SOPHIE followers, from Mykki Blanco to Lyra Pramuk to Backxwash, replicate on what made the artist’s work so arresting, and what it illuminated in its gleam.

From the earliest singles, SOPHIE’s music had an electrical pull. Luminescent, visceral, and delivered with impeccable comedian timing, songs like “BIPP” and “HARD” cleaved open an irresistible area of interest inside digital music and avant-pop. In collaboration with vocalists like Charli XCX, Quay Sprint, Cecile Imagine, Vince Staples, and even Madonna, SOPHIE sharpened synthesis to a propulsive edge, spurring the voice into ecstasy. The voice strikes freely in SOPHIE’s work—snapping, collapsing, mutating, blooming in opposition to fantasies constructed from tactile, lurid sound.

SOPHIE played among the futurisms spawned from the previous 50 years of digital music, drawing improvements from Detroit techno, Chicago home and footwork, and UK bass right into a discipline equally inflected by chart-topping bubblegum pop and hip-hop. The artist’s death on the age of 34 final weekend leaves an abyss on the earth of music, which SOPHIE touched at each degree, collaborating with underground icons and A-listers alike. Right here, contemporaries together with intercontinental hip-hop experimentalist Mykki Blanco, Seattle drag performer and musician Michete, Montreal horrorcore rapper and producer Backxwash, Chicago techno producer Ariel Zetina, and Berlin vocal sculptor Lyra Pramuk replicate on SOPHIE’s incisive synthesis and sound design, and the worlds the artist broke open with them.

Mykki Blanco

I first grew to become conscious of SOPHIE’s music by PC Music, which at all times appeared like this chemical model of pop music—pop music at its most naked bones. I’ve at all times been interested in minimal manufacturing, however this was minimal manufacturing that had been by a blender or a paper shredder. I’m at all times impressed after I meet somebody who’s actually dedicated to their aesthetic and their imaginative and prescient. I may inform that the PC Music children had been crafting this very distinct sound that additionally went into the aesthetics. Among the finest issues about being an artist is world-building, as a result of then that creates one thing for different folks to step into.

A variety of my admiration for SOPHIE got here from the truth that there was somebody who was tremendous gifted and produced her personal music. Often, queer individuals are behind-the-scenes, doing artwork path or styling, or being the performers. And SOPHIE was a performer, too. However more often than not in my profession, the folks behind the blending boards, who had been really operating the applications or producing the music, had been at all times cis-heterosexual males. I keep in mind after I was actually understanding that [production] was additionally a part of SOPHIE’s skillset—I discovered a number of energy in that. SOPHIE’s expertise put her into these actually huge rooms with actually huge names. I at all times discovered that basically fucking superb—it’s you holding the reins, it’s you pulling the strings. I had a lot respect for that, as a result of in doing that, she didn’t compromise something in any respect. Whenever you’re in that type of place of authority—that, to me, as a fellow queer artist, was tremendous inspiring.

If there’s the Matrix after which there’s a world exterior of the Matrix, SOPHIE’s sound jogs my memory of the pressure discipline around the globe. It will be like getting exterior of the Matrix, realizing in the future that there was this different invisible, magical factor that your hand reaches out and buzzes. And also you’re like, “Oh, wait. There’s one other place to go.”

Michete

After I moved to Seattle and began clubbing round 2016 and 2017, I’d hear SOPHIE songs in DJ units. I keep in mind listening to “Queen of This Shit” by Quay Sprint [produced by SOPHIE] in a number of units again then. I began seeing drag numbers to SOPHIE songs—to “LEMONADE” or “VYZEE” or “Hey QT.” I’ve in all probability seen a drag quantity to most SOPHIE productions at one level.

SOPHIE’s sound permeated a lot nightlife. It additionally straight fostered relationships. My major producer, Yufi, we grew to become good buddies operating into one another at events and sharing a number of the identical style—liking a number of Charli and PC Music stuff, that left-field hyperpop sound that wouldn’t exist with out SOPHIE. Now, the music I make with Yufi just isn’t solely sonically knowledgeable by SOPHIE’s work, however that relationship wouldn’t even exist with out SOPHIE’s affect on music and nightlife tradition. That’s enormous, when an artist can convey folks collectively in that approach.

I keep in mind the “It’s Okay To Cry” video got here out like a month after I began HRT. I used to be terrified about what it was going to do to me, after which I keep in mind seeing that video and being like, “It doesn’t matter what occurs, I’m going to be nice.” A lot in SOPHIE’s music isn’t only a easy affirmation about trans folks being actual. It’s extra of a conceptualization of transness as one other medium of self-actualization. A music like “Immaterial” goes a lot deeper than saying, “Trans girls are girls!” My private relationship with gender is much more advanced than that. I discover it far more validating for somebody to inform me I can do no matter I need and alter and mutate in no matter path fairly than simply telling me, “You’re an actual lady.” The core lyric of “Immaterial” is nearly saying, “You’re not an actual lady, and neither is anyone else.” Immaterial boys and immaterial women, none of this stuff are actual. That’s a way more releasing mind-set about transness—as this limitless factor that you would be able to frequently evolve, that you would be able to customise to no matter diploma you’re feeling.

Just about each trans lady I do know in music has been influenced or impressed by SOPHIE in a roundabout way. I believe it truly is our job to make use of this as motivation to proceed creating, to see the place we are able to take it. We’ve got a really uncommon alternative to ignite ideas in folks’s minds, to make folks query issues and encourage in a singular approach that solely trans girls are able to doing. SOPHIE dying makes me wish to work more durable. It makes me wish to reside extra.