Vinyl LP
After a tumultuous 2020, Brittnee Moore was feeling drained. Amid Covid-19 surges and lockdowns, Moore, who records as bbymutha, faced a series of difficulties: After dropping her debut Muthaland, she retired from music and reneged within months; lost her cat and her brick-and-mortar shop; and discovered black mold in her home. By 2021, she was waist-deep in a creative rut. After her brief withdrawal from the industry, she’d released a steady drip of loosies and EPs, all uploaded without fanfare to her Bandcamp page. Despite building a large cult following, she still wasn’t feeling artistically fulfilled. At the end of an overseas tour, she stayed in London for a few weeks to work on music. A bleary night in a European drag club opened her ears to UK club music, a sound she wanted to explore further. These sessions laid the groundwork for sleep paralysis, which marries the trunk-rattling sounds of Southern rap music to the frenetic, body-buzz pulse of the English rave scene. It’s an inspired combination that gels beautifully, rekindling the fire Moore thought was long extinguished.
It’s an immediately engaging and intense listen, its apocalyptic beats and frank lyrics feeling like the unremitting push of a hydraulic press. Moore’s trademark Tennessee thump, deployed on songs like “gun kontrol” and “final girl,” works remarkably well alongside the pupil-dilating jungle of “piss!” or the hyperactive breakbeat LYAM + Fion Orrell provide on “tony hawk.” Her lyrics are as unsparing as ever, weaving together references to long-held trauma, freaky kiss-and-tell anecdotes, and chest-out shit talk.
But a couple of important moments on sleep paralysis break the tension: At the end of “rich,” an early two-part dancehall banger that moves from syrupy to clattering, Moore starts laughing. It’s a jarring contrast—moments before, her voice had been multi-tracked and pitch-shifted, warped into a disarming squelch as she rapped “I can’t be nice to these peasants no more” over the menacing production. You can hear the grin in her voice as she says, “That makes me happy!” seemingly pleased with how the recording sounds. Later, on the droning Memphis phonk of penultimate track “mutha’s massacre,” that grin reappears as Moore repeats “They callin’ me a killer” during the chorus. It’s as though she’s stifling a chuckle, trying not to break the bone-chilling atmosphere she and producer Foisey. have built.
These instances of levity are key to unlocking sleep paralysis: At first blush, the record feels crushing, but these moments help to highlight the joy hidden in its dark corners. On subsequent listens, it’s easier to spot Moore’s goofy sense of humor amidst the din. Slowly, your face contorts, your shoulders bounce, and you’ve surrendered to it completely—this album is fun. More than that, it seems deeply cathartic for its creator. On the cover, Moore is surrounded by plush toys of skulls and alien heads, eyes pitched black as the void. She stares down the barrel of the camera flashing a warm, wide, toothy grin.
