On the Rise
Zoumer

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.”

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 Paris and settled in Denmark’s capital – but Derradj did in fact grow up on Amager, the largest island in the Øresund and also home to Christiana. Carrying a diasporic identity, naturally, that’s seeped into her music – e.a.l. (euro arab lovergirl) sits in the intersection of Copenhagen’s cool alt-pop and Middle Eastern and North African instrumentation, with accompanying field recordings across Copenhagen, London, Paris, and Algiers. It’s a record of contradictions existing between disparate places, cultures, and ways of viewing the world, but that combination gave strength to Derradj’s own identity.

A breakup spurred Derradj’s need to reconnect with her roots. “There can be many different reasons for why you have to connect with yourself,” she says, soon eagerly offering deeper reflection. “When I grew up, there were many times – which, when I look back at it, it’s super weird and I’m embarrassed by – where I wished I was completely Danish, or completely Algerian. Which is weird because you’re not just one of those things.” The “euro arab lovergirl” she repeatedly circles back to serves to name that in-between experience of living in diaspora. “The ‘lovergirl’ aspect was this idea of sides of myself that I wanted to embrace,” Derradj explains about the latter. “I feel we all have those sides – being open and curious about music, nature, and the people around us.”

To ascribe a tangible meaning to the phrase, it’s a guiding light for Derradj, used to banish the shadowy cloud of doubt of embracing her dual identity as one. It’s not in stasis, either: “That’s why I shortened it down to ‘e.a.l.’. People can be like, ‘I only relate to lovergirl, or arab lovergirl, or just lover,’ something like that where they can make their own character.” On a track like “say something”, which travels along a radiant synth pulse, she is first plainly yearning (“Wanna be a good girl for you, wear real nice clothes for you”) until she reclaims her own independent space (“I don’t need anything from you”).

Sometimes, the lovergirl in Derradj wants to stay with her cat: “I got a cat like two years ago, and I feel like such a cliché cat person when I say this, but she kind of taught me about setting boundaries and self-love.” The feline is a frequent motif, but when intertwined with love, its territorial nature lends to seeking strength in vulnerability post-breakup: craving romance while letting go.

The record’s existence catalysed multiple other changes – having more fun with music than on her 2024 debut Green World, and finally overcoming the separation of her identities. “I think it’s embarrassing in my mid-twenties to finally get there,” Derradj admits with a laugh, “But when I look in the mirror now, I’m like, ‘This is who I am. I’m this layered person.’ That’s awesome when you think about it – that you can make something that can help you get to somewhere else. It’s like, music did talk to me!” Her fans have corroborated this: “I had a half-Norwegian, half-Syrian girl who was texting me, writing an extended greeting sharing their background. It was so cute. Someone also said, ‘Greetings from a fellow Euro-Algerian.’ It was really cool.”

This new Zoumer era speaks to a newfound confidence in the project, and music more broadly. Derradj had known since middle school that she could see herself as a musician, taking after-school choir very seriously and playing the High School Musical version of SingStar every weekend. Eventually, in high school, when she first signed up for a music class, doubts ensued. 

“There was this old school idea, which I think was true back then, that you had to know music theory to go into a music conservatory,” Derradj recalls. “I just didn’t really know theory, so I was like, ‘Oh shit, fuck, I can’t do this.’” She attended a folk school afterwards, discovering the world of DAWs and genre-bending albums such as M.I.A.’s Arular – it’s easy to see how its raw electroclash sound and hip-hop cadence laid the groundwork for e.a.l. (euro arab lovergirl).

Due to her insecurity, she settled for the second-best option – the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts – going all in on visual art. Yet her initial regrets about her choice would quickly evaporate. “I would paint and draw while I was listening to music, or I would write lyrics, and it was all very music-oriented,” Derradj remembers. “When I got into Copenhagen’s fine arts school, it just hit me, like, ‘Fuck it, this is what I really want to do.’ I feel like I was very frightened, and now when I look back at it, I’m like, ‘Why were you scared?’ That’s easy to say when you get on the other side.”

Her personal triumph is like successfully overcoming a climax of a narrative, and it just so happens that cinematic storytelling is deeply embedded in the new album. Her peers at the Royal Danish Academy inspire her – “everyone is building their own new world of references, styles, and sentences” – and so does the storytelling prowess of artists like Gorillaz. e.a.l. (euro arab lovergirl) has distinct bookends: its intro is a radio being tuned into the album, evoking Derradj discovering Algerian music from her dad’s car radio; and the outro is swarmed with chirping cicadas, Derradj imagining the soft-spoken voice is coming from “someone sitting with a guitar at a tree.” Characterising mundane moments like those as rich in nature is supposedly the direct lead into her next chapter.

On this one, though, Fatima Al Qadiri’s aquatic, meditative New Age film score for Atlantics inspired her to focus on the images conjured on each track. She opens up about the densely percussive, rattling closer “to the end” in detail. “I imagined this love song to be someone saying goodbye to someone at the ocean or the harbour,” Derradj explains. “It’s not something where you listen and go, ‘Oh, that’s the harbour,’ but for me, it was like, ‘Now I can hear this play out somewhere.’ It’s something that’s attached to the songs. There’s so much music I love listening to where it transports me somewhere else, and that’s the feeling I’m interested in.”

Returning to “euro trash girl” once more, there’s another line that stands out in Derradj’s sticky stream-of-consciousness: “Everyone here thinks it’s cool to be laidback, don’t try too hard.” Not only is she commenting on the need to put in the work to make creative endeavours happen, but also on her diasporic personhood specifically as a Copenhagen native. “There’s so much cool Nordic style and culture, but sometimes if you’re a mix of something, you can also feel like you’re not good enough,” Derradj says. “You’re limiting yourself in a way.” 

By writing her music where she did, especially citing the profound effect of London’s “melting pot of different cultures” and Paris as an “Arab diasporic city,” Derradj has created a place where being culturally multifaceted is empowering, not something to be ashamed of.