“SoundCloud surfing” is a phrase turned into an exercise: pressing play on an artist that you’re familiar with and just letting the music come to you as the site’s algorithm suggests and plays music from similar artists. Sometimes you miss, but often, you end up listening to the music of someone you’ve never heard of on repeat for 20 minutes.
This happened recently when I found myself listening to EP 1, a five-track project from someone named iZNiik. After stumbling upon the song “Blue Skies,” a four-minute track that features soulful snares and heavy drums paired with sampled vocals from what I think are old television shows and commercials, I decided to check out their page to see what else they had. By the time I got to track 3, titled “Cruel,” I was fully been immersed in the wave that is iZNiik and I wasn’t ready to surface. The project blends all sorts of genres. There’s hip-hop with electronic influences and alternative with R&B vibes (I can’t stand the direction that “vibes” has gone in, but it was the only word that fit), and it all comes together to create an easy (and infectious) listen.
A quick Google search turned up little to nothing on the background and origin on this mysterious entity. There’s only one tweet on their Twitter account, simply linking to EP 1. They have profiles on all the major streaming networks, all solely featuring their debut project. Apparently, some graphic design studio created a logo for iZNiik in January of 2016, but there’s no confirmed correlation. This may be one of those times where anonymity takes precedence because of the quality of music we’ve been given. If iZNiik wants to be an unknown to the world, that’s perfectly fine. But with sounds as good as this, it’s only a matter of time before more people start running Google searches of their own.
