Meet Boutique Feelings: Your new favourite alt hip-hop maverick
Photo credit: Aabid Youssef
With performers like Kendrick Lamar, Run The Jewels, and Travis Scott, modern hip-hop has been riding that aggressive in-your-face wave. We’re living in an angry world, it’s true, but sometimes you need to turn that all off and get lost in the trance.
Enter Boutique Feelings—a new laid-back alternative hip-hop artist that expertly blends a ’90s boom-bap and trip-hop ethos with psychedelia and cut-up krautrock interludes. Think of the cut-up hip-hop of Gorillaz or someone like Open Mike Eagle, combined with the Kosmische musik vibe of Popul Vuh.
The project comes from Karim Lakhdar, the lead singer, guitar, and synth player of the Montreal progressive psych-rock collective, Atsuko Chiba. Since Atsuko’s beginnings, Lakhdar has been dabbling in his solo hip-hop endeavour, a project that he only shared with his band and close friends, but would eventually turn into Boutique Feelings. In fact, if he hadn’t quit his job at the bank a year and a half ago, Boutique Feelings may have never seen a true release. Now the Boutique Feelings self-titled debut EP is dropping in late February.
“I decided to really take a year to myself to focus on music and other creative things,” Lakhdar says. “ It was scary for a bit here because I was used to a certain type of stability, but I wrote a bunch of new music and approached Mothland, and they were interested in the project, so it made it all real.”
Lakhdar is the sole composer of Boutique Feelings, mixing cut-up samples, guitar, bass, synths, and drum programs, with his personal rhymes. His creative process is constantly evolving, but he usually writes the music first and then tackles the lyrics.
“From there, it becomes a freestyle and then really takes a life of its own,” he says. “I’ll write lyrics, but I really work on the cadence of each word to get the flow. I’ve always been really into the rhythmic aspect of hip-hop and flow is a super important element for me.”
The upcoming self-titled EP contains the tracks “Sundried Autumn,” “Trynna Do,” and “I.Y.W.M.,” three tracks that offer different hip-hop styles and facets of Boutique Feelings. However, they can all be linked thematically—focusing on self-confidence, admitting faults, and “the idea of trying to remain slightly objective in a world that's forcing you to make decisions and choose sides.”
“Maybe there is a hint of politics and world events in there too, but it wasn’t intended. Those are just part of my everyday life, so they always find a way in,” Lakhdar says.
Now he is gearing up for Boutique Feeling’s first-ever show at Taverne Tour, the pub crawl music festival run by Mothland.
The debut show will feature almost all of Atsuko Chiba—David Palumbo on bass, Eric Schafhauser on guitar, Kevin McDonald on the laptop, beats and synth, and the addition of Vanessa Ascher-Vittoria on flute and backing vocals.
“The songs are a bit more energetic with the full band and that’s what I wanted for the live show,” Lakhdar says. “I’m really looking forward to popping the cherry of the first live show and focusing only on vocals and taking the rapper role.”
Catch Boutique Feelings live during Taverne Tour on February 6, 2025 with Hua Li and Strange Froots at Casa del popolo. Tickets here.
Photo credit: Aabid Youssef