Melina Twyman already completed her metamorphosis from guitar-strumming folkie to hip-hop songstress on September’s brooding EP 1605. In January, she takes her artistic evolution a step further via Dispatch, an R&B daydream with traces of world music and Biggie-era rap.

“The song ‘Dispatch’ is about college – about my place in life right now,” offers Twyman, who recently ditched her singer-songwriter handle Melina Evalyn for new nom-de-rap Bateau, about the EP’s title track. “I’m about to graduate and feeling all the pressure of people asking what I’m going to do with my life. This song is about me self-medicating and being like, ‘Not right now, I’m too fucked up.’”

The Houston native, who lives in Austin and studies at Texas State in San Marcos, enlisted local MC/producer no1mportant – a frequent collaborator with Scuare and staple at the Austin Mic Exchange – for a 50-second verse on “Dispatch” echoing Bateau’s not-ready-for-responsibility sentiment:

“I’m too afraid of heights,
Scared of guns, ropes, and knives.
Scared of husband and the wife,
Scared to death, scared to life.
Scared to ever be the man I think and dream of every night.”

Dispatch arrives January 5th.

This article appears in December 18 • 2015.

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