Arabic scales and nu-metal converge in this Saudi Arabia-born Londoner’s unique brand of dance-pop
![One to watch: Alewya](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/9ab7cdf90ecaebe863a3ab7f95db095fed070d4f/186_0_2790_1674/master/2790.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdG8tZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=acecd59c68f0f234e2f0910312c9f9ec)
It’s a special sort of artist who can rope in one of the main men in
UK jazz on a track that sounds like prog-metallers Tool and is about periods, but Alewya is a force to be reckoned with. That song is The Code, featuring jazz drummer extraordinaire Moses Boyd, in which Alewya’s frustration about a heavy flow became a meditation on her Ethiopian-Egyptian ancestry. She delivers her refined yet ravey dance-pop with the attitude of Aaliyah, the cool of a be-shaded Neo from The Matrix and a whole lot of “twisted Firestartaaaar” energy.
The past year has been impossibly tough for
BREAKING artists, but Alewya (pronounced “Ah-le-wee-ya”) has been gradually building buzz with her ancestral club bangers. There was Jagna, which made it on to Annie Mac’s Radio 1 show this year; Sweating, a shadowy, sultry track, drawing on dancehall and reggaeton rhythms and trap’s haunted instrumentals; and Alewya’s latest single Spirit_X, on which she raps over a classy drum’n’bass beat.