Ok, so our Icelandic isn’t so good. Or, to be honest, it’s nonexistent. But we DO know that Countess Malaise specializes in discomfort, and we DO know that there’s a legit underground rap scene in Iceland. By now you might have guessed it: Dýrfinna Benita is Icelandic. The young rapper’s frame of reference is grim and quirky: she likes splatter films, Powerpuff Girls, and the manga artist Junji Ito. “Countess Malaise” rhymes with “Modesty Blaise,” the name of a fictional comic character from the the ’60s described as a “dangerous young woman with numerous skills, who because of her criminal past repeatedly becomes involved in altercations with criminals in exotic locations around the world.” And so Countess Malaise stages herself as an avenger with smudged eyeshadow from the underworld, as a caricatured, comic-book goth bitch whose lyrics, on the other hand, go far beyond mere aestheticized horror. She raps about the prosaic, shadowy side of life: depression, violence, suicide. But, as she put it in her own words in a rare interview, »It feels empowering and I don’t feel sad when I rap it, even though the lyrics are kind of fucked up, which is really amazing.” “Rap is poetry. Rap is art,” she continues. Rap is also a coping strategy. Countess Malaise: dark/deep/our insider tip for 2018.

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