Album Review: TAPZ - Beautiful Nightmare

As a generation of disgraced emo heroes are rightly shown the door, there's an opportunity for a new genre of music to tame and direct those young people seeking an emotional angle to their pop music.

Enter TAPZ with his supremely contemporary rap'n'B, punctuated by melodramatic gasps of breath. If you have feelings, and headphones, you're in for an adventure.

Didn't Know is the greatest melodramatic triumph. We build to a crescendo and, just when we think TAPZ's feelings can't get any more performative and heartfelt, we close with some serious guitar wailing. TAPZ seems to ask: if you can't be silly about feelings, what can you be silly about? Killa is a drunken, sexy swoon. It is the epic that the EP promises, the sort of song you can build a genre around.

While TAPZ lacks obvious influence and The Weeknd's flair for poetry, he is not short of ambition. Not satisfied with trying to be a 'good NZ rapper', he's trying to be a shining idol; sharing his feelings with us so that we might know him better. Not every track is a success - Run Don't Run's popularity is difficult to account for - but there is glory in seeing TAPZ reach for the stars. There's emotion, too. Noteworthy stuff.