After a short and dreamy musical intro, the rap begins and it’s an assured and clear rap, and Vallé's Love Me sounds sublime. The classic syncopation of rhythm
and rhyme is performed with a cool style, but it's also intense and stirring.
The lyrical content draws you in with the moving story of
how a Daddy hit the bottle but rallied with God and promised to “Raise this
boy into a man”, it's quite intense but the rap leads nicely to the tuneful chorus
lyric “I know, I know, you have, love me”
Like a passionate plea, where an honest and open sharing of your
story can help to gain a broader perspective and help you to appreciate what
you did have rather than what you didn’t have, it's clear there is an ethical perspective that Vallé wants you to absorb.
The songs influence is powerful and tangible, it felt like an
ode to truth and love, with an underlying message of hope, with real desires and a wish for the listener to be a person of substance that can love and be happy.
A well-structured track with strong themes that once again
shows the power of music, and how that in its many forms a song can exist to be
more than just simple entertainment, it sometimes strives to be emotive with ambitions
to inspire, as this debut track from Vallé does so, in spades.
Vallé is the brainchild of Enjalas Jenkinson - a new ‘boujee to the bone’ project which is gearing up to blaze a trail across the Kiwi music landscape and beyond.
Vallé makes his first move, with the poetic debut single Love Me. It’s a personal song, which draws on Jenkinson’s own experiences, as well as his observations, of the age-old battle with self love and identity. “This song is about unpacking the pain as opposed to telling the world how to ‘fix themselves’,” he explains. “I believe the fixing sometimes happens unintentionally, as we open up and become vulnerable. This is what I aimed to do by creating this song.”
With an effortlessly cool and understated groove, blended with rap and R’n’B influences, warm melodies and a strong narrative running throughout, Love Me is a bold entrance for Vallé and showcases what’s still to come from the talented Christchurch-based artist.