Zoumer is on the rise

Yasmina Derradj’s second album as Zoumer – e.a.l. (euro arab lovergirl) – impelled her to walk people through her identities, as she does on its near-eponymous mission statement “euro trash girl”. Atop a confidently strutting beat, Derradj maps her whereabouts from Algiers to Copenhagen in a freestyle embracing her nuance: “I am a different girl, I got mixed up genes, I got Arab attitude.” The floaty, lustrous dream-pop of Copenhagen collides with hypnotic oud and qanun rhythms of Algeria as Derradj seamlessly embodies the album title from beginning to end, as if her paths converge: “Yeah she is walking around, in some real nice clothes,” later expressing, “I’m a lovergirl, I’m waiting for the right gem.” Derradj feels herself as all those things and more. “The ‘euro trash girl’ is a character I’ve heard about for such a long time," she tells me, "but then I was thinking, ‘Who is she?’ I wanted to give her a scene.” Sign up to Best Fit's Substack for regular dispatches from the world of pop culture Derradj is based in Copenhagen, a fact gatherable from “euro trash girl”’s comical and hopefully fictitious explanation of her father, an Algerian prince, who was busted for drugs in Par...