quinn, courtesy of quinn.
The notoriously slippery, happily reclusive artist quinn opened up her world last summer in the lead-up to her sophomore album, quinn, begrudgingly submitting to the conventions of the press cycle. This move from the shadows of internet cult fandom into the harsh light of day yielded valuable insight into the 18-year-old DMV native’s background and process (look no further than her FADER Interview with Jordan Darville for some deep-cut gems).
Since the release of the latter record, however, she’s returned to her old ways, dropping short-form releases without warning as she did in her salad days under several different monikers. The latest of these, slaps, is three short-and-sweet tracks (though relatively long by quinn’s terms) that lean into the hip-hop elements of her pan-genre pallette. She opens with “thraxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,” a song designed to make you worry on the dance floor, before moving into “longterm drugstory,” in which she affects a detached irony toward her subject matter that’s somehow even more panic inducing. She carries this depressed nihilism into the tape’s closer, “sheet of acid,” but the desperation underneath it is clear to anyone who’s listening closely.
These contradictory statements are part and parcel of quinn’s schema for slaps, which she graciously broke down for The FADER via email. Find the story behind the project’s basement cover art and detailed explainers for all three tracks, in quinn’s own words, below.
quinn on slap’s cover art
“the cover art is my grandma’s basement, she has a first half where it’s just as big but it has finished walls + a huge sofa that numerous family members camped on from all different generations. the clothes up on that rack are a combination of my brother’s and uncle’s clothes since they lived there with her at the time the photo was taken (circa 2021).
“all of my cover art has something to do with my life or my childhood, and with my mixtapes being baby pictures, i figured i could switch it up some and for the EP i could use a place i grew up in and slap one of my graffiti stickers on the bottom. i like to use graffiti in my cover art sort of as a thing where it looks like i’m vandalizing the cover art, i’m vandalizing photos of places i’ve made some of my best and worst memories. i like to leave the reason why up for interpretation but there is a reason behind why i chose to start doing it.”
quinn on slaps
“the tape itself, audibly it’s all about balancing my friendships and relationships while being constantly under the influence from all kinds of substances that i like to experiment with in my day-to-day life. so i structured it like a short trip.”
“i started off the tape with a happily emotional (or, for lack of better term, bittersweet) song, you’re happy and you’re dancing but some of the lines are kinda like damn but it’s still slightly concerning.”
“then you get to the second track which is that immediate plunge into the biggest pit your stomach could possibly carry and now it’s just a panic attack and you’re wondering what happened and how things got that bad. by the end of the song i’m slowing things down a bit after realizing i’m not gonna come to a conclusion as of why i feel the way i feel so i’m just gonna submerge myself into the pain and get comfortable for the long haul.”
“that leads us to the last track, which is “sheet of acid”: depressing, lackadaisical, off-the-dome lines over a dramatically somber drone with some drums attempting to better the mood but obviously failing. this track is basically saying, ‘well this is how it’s gonna be for a very long time and i know you don’t like it but you have no choice but to live with it.’ then it just ends desperately. it’s not a good or a bad ending because i’m still alive. only the future will decide which ending it has and it’ll be based on the decisions i make.”
