DJ Kylie: Kylie Cloud Produces the DJ, Promotes the Album, and Probably Reviewed It Too
Kylie Cloud has already given DJ Kylie a fake Pitchfork review (the legendary Bitchcork), and her philosophy is simple: if you won't promote independent artists, who will? She's right. So consider this a review she didn't write herself.
The concept is that Kylie is the DJ, but she's "producing the DJing instead of DJing it live." The result is a club album of jersey club, techno, and hip hop, 12 songs in 38 minutes, stuffed with samples, many from the 2009-2012 radio of her adolescence. Some of them are filtered and pitched so far past recognition that I couldn't ID half, and it didn't matter. The sampling is the method, not a nostalgia trip.
It's also a dare. Kylie's take: "Girl there are entire genres based in sampling popular songs and they never get taken down because if you sample smart... you can get away with it. It's the risk you run." The question she's chasing is how you use other people's music "in the day and age where AI can clock anything." Her answer: "The most creative survive." This record is her proof.
The first two tracks are a sprint. "Soda" is bright hyperpop over Scissor Sisters' "Let's Have a Kiki," with Kochinita's vocal hooks sampled all over and a featured verse that is X-rated but cute. She's hardly missing from the song, but I still wanted more of those dulcet tones, and that's a craving, not a complaint. Then it ends around 2:30, mid-vibe. Fair, it's a DJ mix-out. Then it's bang into "RiRiRi" with Sega sound effects and tambourine playing like it's late to the party. It's a breakdown in progress, delivered as track two. Thrilling, and I needed a bit of a lie-down.
Which is exactly what "Sleep Alone" offers. Minor-key synths, a late-night bassline, housey hooks that give me early Deee-Lite B-sides, with vocals pitched up and drowned in a ping pong delay that feels like reality slipping. The track lets you breathe, and the groove lands harder because the first stretch probably wore you out a bit.
"C.U.N.T." brings New Romantic synthbass, Eurobeat phrasing, and skittery breakbeat drums far too detailed for a song with that title. Plenty to sink your teeth into. Kylie the producer is so good that Kylie the vocalist barely gets a turn, and I'd happily trade a breakbeat or two to hear more of her sexy voice up front.
"Faggots in Paris" is probably the hardest cut, a riff on "Niggas in Paris" built from Kanye West's "Mercy" (hello, "Lamborghini Mercy"). Pitched-up vocal chops open into raw lines, and it's part reclamation, part provocation, and part joke, and completely sincere about all three. A relentless kick barges in and out whether you like it or not, the samples couldn't be hookier, and the vocal stutter effect woofs like a dog.
"Cream" flips Kelela's "Sorbet" into the album's longest track, just over four minutes. It's urgent and relentless but sweet and silky, and the voice keeps rising, at times dissolving into a synth layer before climbing up another octave. She never lets up.
While not everything is designed to land so cleanly, "PUSH" is where Kylie stops hiding her receipts. Robyn's "Sexistential" vocal samples are on full display, far less filtered or effected than elsewhere on the record, and she wins the tug of war: she's louder in the mix and in control, while the aggressive rapper screams at her from a distance like someone shouting across a club after she's already left. It's a great power move, very Robyn. It sounds more like a standoff than a collaboration.
Then "Trade" returns to softer territory, stripped back, fast-paced, housey vibes but more minimal than anything around it. The samples are much less obvious and pushed back into the mix. It's like Dr. Frank-N-Furter moved the lab into a basement club and swapped the spectacle for a no-nonsense lace-front and a tight, muffled groove that trots along, before the track opens into a wider, watery space that feels like the after-hours you weren't invited to. Here, Kylie shows a subtler, more layered side.
Now for a bit more drama. "Yr Luvvv" opens with an Annie Lennox hook, Sade samples, and snares and claps that smack like they have opinions. Nicki Minaj's voice is meshed in, responding to Sade. Yes, that Nicki, and yes, many queer listeners are over her recent histrionics. Kylie, an early Nicki stan, says she used the voice "as sort of an homage, almost like sending her image down a river. Closing a casket." A funeral with a drum break. The Annie hook is also a messy bit of music history: it comes from "No More 'I Love You's,'" which began with The Lover Speaks, and Nicki sampled it on "Your Love." Annie reportedly refused to clear it, so Nicki's team said fuck it and cleared it with the original songwriters instead. The hook has been flipped, refused, and rerouted more times than a bootleg on a burned CD. Kylie runs it back through Nicki in a sample that feels like gossip and closure at once. Nicki needed lawyers (and cash) to get that hook through the door; Kylie, safely underground, just needs to sample smart.
"Freak Motel" checks in at happy hardcore speed, with a very fast rap and a sample so buried it's practically inaudible. The main female vocal is sweet but gated, chopped into stabs that keep cutting out mid-breath. Underneath, I can hear the afterglow of the "ah" from Annie Lennox's "No More 'I Love You's,'" which makes it feel like a ghost of "Yr Luvvv" wandering the hallway.
Then the tempo drops, but the chaos doesn't. "Luv'n Yr B0dy" slows things down with metallic, steel-drum-like percussion, twisted piano hooks, and it's still a lot: the same restless energy, just stretched out and sloshing around. I didn't see it coming, and I loved it. "C'est Luv Me" closes with a bit of sweetness over breakbeat-style drums, and a sense of urgency that keeps it moving. After the mayhem, the record signs off with a smile instead of a bow, which is the correct ending for a big night out.
There's a bigger argument under the party. Kylie points out that DJs can be very protective about their tools and not especially open to using them in ways beyond the usual. DJ Kylie is a loud rebuttal. She treats the DJ set as something you can compose, sample, and build in the studio, so the mix itself becomes the instrument. The dancefloor needs that kind of tampering: records that reward headphones and sweaty rooms equally, and that remind the purists a deck is a starting point, not a rulebook.
DJ Kylie is an unruly and shameless standout, even if it occasionally leaves you wanting more of a track and more of Kylie's crooning. Side B, coming soon, teased on the "I Cry Chanel" single, is the emotional comedown, like the part of the night when you have a personal crisis in the corner of the club. Until then, Kylie is going hard promoting herself on the socials, and she's most certainly earned the right. Last call is a lie. Press play again.
Kylie Cloud's DJ Kylie was released 21st August 2026 on Cloudphoria Records.
Follow Kylie Cloud