Vayda signs to Lex and stays under three minutes

Vayda has spent five years making songs that end before you settle into them. 'Haunting You', her first release on Lex Records, runs 2:31, long by her standards and still gone early. It earns the extra seconds.

She came up in Decatur, Georgia, the daughter of a former rapper, playing piano by ear and producing before she ever touched a mic: FruityLoops in high school, mashups on SoundCloud, beats sold on Twitter. Producing from 2019, rapping from 2021. VV arrived in 2022, Breeze in 2023 with a place on the year-end rap lists, Forrest Gump that December, then VAYTRIX, fever, Dont Lose The Groove and Get in the Car. This year she has already dropped 'Boy Drugs' and 'Bangles' and traded verses with Chenayder, Dreamer Isioma and Anysia Kim.

Tony Seltzer and Laron produced 'Haunting You', and it opens close to empty: a couple of melodic keys, air where the drums should be. Niontay, out of Brooklyn, takes a share of it, and the two trade verses back and forth rather than taking a half each.

Vayda's vocal stays high and airy, the bass squashed until it hums more than it hits, the keys carrying what melody there is. It is night music with the lights off, and it will still play in late October. RAINASFUNERA's video seats her at a candlelit table.

It is for anyone who has run Breeze into the ground, or wants rap that goes by in a breath. What does not work is that opening, so sparse it eats a chunk of a very short runtime before the first bar lands.

Three and a half, then: a good record that could stand to be longer. It stops instead of ending, which is the point and also the complaint.

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