HARAM!

HARAM!, GoldLink’s second studio album, is unlike anything he put out before it. “I wanted to challenge myself,” the Washington, D.C., rapper, singer, and songwriter tells Apple Music. “I wanted to almost make an album that was an antonym to what GoldLink was perceived to be.” Here, the dance-floor grooves and soulful funk that jetted him to stardom have been swapped for bone-crunching distortion and seething, noisy rage—a reflection of GoldLink’s mood at a time when George Floyd’s murder was still a raw, open wound.
Work began on HARAM! in early 2020, then continued between cities and lockdowns, from Malibu to Paris—where riots in reaction to global police brutality sparked everything that plays out through the album—to Amsterdam and then, finally, London. There, the rapper—real name D’Anthony William Carlos—collaborated with the cream of UK talent, including legendary producer, songwriter, and engineer Paul Epworth, Skepta collaborator LukeyWorld, Fire, Newham rhymer Rizloski, and Santigold. But HARAM! also sees GoldLink take it right back to the D.C. neighborhood that raised him. “I'm not normally as personal on my records,” he says. “I don't really talk about the things I've been through when it comes to the streets, about shooting people and drug dealing and death. I try not to glorify that, but on this album, I had to embrace that.” Read on as GoldLink walks us through his dizzying second full-length, one track at a time.
“Extra Clip” (feat. NLE Choppa) “The first song we made, in Paris during the riots. I turned up the distortion filter as much as you possibly can and it just kind of just screeched. You can hear rumbling in the background and I started yelling. It was really just a track of our emotion. And I didn't want to finish it. I didn't want to add words to it. I thought that the feeling was enough.”
“202” “I'm from D.C., so this is an ode to the punk and go-go scenes. When my dad was going to these go-go shows that were predominantly rock, it started changing the sound palette in the city. It sounded like the smell of the streets of D.C. So I named it just ‘202,’ which is the area code.”
“White Walls” “Kind of an extension of ‘202.’ Every time we were mapping out the [order of the] album, we never took those two [songs] away from each other. I was studying cults at the time. Because I wanted to figure out what a cult is, what a cult leader is and what defines a cult. And I really feel America is a cult. This is from the standpoint of culture—breaking down what the word ‘culture’ means.”
“Spit on It” (feat. Rizloski) “A lot of the mysticism of GoldLink comes from the streets. Being in the streets, it's about survival. The less you allow people to know, the more control you have. When I make a song like this, there’s so much information inside it. I'm talking about my boy Fire beating his case and, if he needed it, I have a $100K stash for him right here. I'm talking about white bitches, Black bitches. It’s just very anti-PC.”
“Terrordome” “[US producer and songwriter] Tyler Johnson wanted to do a session. He’d been making the Harry Styles album, and I thought, ‘Right, he's going to fucking hate this.’ He didn't. We ended up making ‘Terrordome,’ which is, to me, a pop record that stands the test of time.”
“Evian” (feat. PinkPantheress, Rizloski & Rax) “A friend of mine had sent me a record from PinkPantheress on SoundCloud and I said, ‘Who the fuck is this girl?’ We got in a session and I'm just cutting a bunch of records and testing out different sounds. From there, I kind of Quincy Jones-ed the whole thing where I wanted her here. I really wanted to recreate this kind of UK garage sound that we've been missing for years now, but modernize it.”
“Raindrops” (feat. Flo Milli) “I wrote this about my ex at the time, because I was frustrated with her. Even though I was almost dissing her, I wanted her to sing. She did it, then I threw it in a pile and forgot about it. Anyway, we got to Paris and one of the A&Rs ends up hearing it. I decided it needed a new, raw vocal. I thought of Flo Milli. She knocked it out of the park.”
“Twin” (feat. Rich The Kid) “This is something that Rich The Kid had sent over and I thought it was fucked. The concept was already there, and I was very impressed by the route that Rich wanted to go through. There’s this entire beautiful orchestra bit at the end and I thought it was incredible. It elevated the song to another level.”
“Girl Pacino” (feat. Deji Okeze) “I'm a fan of Kintaro [Jameel Bruner, former member of The Internet]. We've been friends for about six years. He's so weird, in the best way possible. I heard the song on his SoundCloud and hit him up. He's like, ‘Do you like it? You can have it, I just don't have the stems.’ I was like, ‘Whatever, man, just send it.’ And every time I hear it, I think of him saying, ‘This is going to go diamond!’”
“Thump Chronicles Vol. 1” (feat. Pressa & Dan Diggerz) “I was in Mexico at the beginning of 2020 for a festival and I went back home and did a session. I talked about personal things. Dan Diggerz came in and he was perfect; he has a voice that could command a room. We sat on that part for a long time and I kept thinking about how I wanted a different voice that stood out over the record and the jumpiness of the beat. I went through a few options, and Pressa was the perfect one.”
“Culture Clash” (feat. Fire) “This is an American brother from LA interpreting the UK sound, making something that is low-key similar, but nothing like what the UK sound is. The BPM is there for a faster rap, but it's not a drill song. I wanted Fire to introduce it and tell his story, because I wanted it to be as raw as possible. It’s like cultures clashing.”
“Wayne Perry” (feat. LukeyWorld) “Lukey did 11 years in jail and he's my age, so he has a story to tell. When I met him, I didn't know he could rap. I was like, ‘Go in the booth.’ And he just kept rapping, and I didn’t let him stop. We named it ‘Wayne Perry’ ’cause it's an ode to this guy who was a notorious D.C. gangster who happens to be my uncle. He’s a very big positive influence in my life. He changed his life and he’s Muslim now.”
“Wild and Lethal Trash!” (feat Fire and Santigold) “I named this ‘Wild and Lethal Trash!’ because my favorite designer is Walter Van Beirendonck, from Antwerp. [Scottish musician and producer] Sam Gellaitry made the beat. I told him, ‘I just want it to sound expensive.’ I wanted the palette to be grand. Whatever you think Watch the Throne sounds like, that's the way I want it to sound.”
“Don't Cry Over Spilled Milk” (feat. Jesse Boykins III) “I was working on this in Malibu with [US singer-songwriter and producer] Gwen Bunn. She had sent this over, almost as a completed idea of what she thought this album sounded like. But it was a skeleton of a song and I started filling in the lanes. It was a very back-and-forth type of email situation, but we had been working together for two, three years and had so much synergy at this point, we didn't need to do too much.”
“Cindy’s Daughter” (feat. Maleek Berry and Bibi Bourelly) “It’s ironic, this is the last track I recorded for the album. [German producer and songwriter] Rascal and I are very close—we’ve been working together since my 2015 mixtape [And After That, We Didn’t Talk]. He sent me a demo that he did with Bibi. I've known her for four or five years and I love her to death. Even though she was born in Berlin, we're from the same hometown and she went to school there. I heard the demo she wrote and I loved it, and Rascal loved it too.”