The Russian-born rapper who built his name on abrasive trap and rage beats has gone full electropop. His new full-length, released across two discs, is his most melodic and most divisive project yet.
For years, Kai Angel was known as one half of the underground hip-hop duo VIPERR, trading verses with longtime collaborator 9mice over industrial, rage-inflected trap production. His new album, Shh…, barely resembles that sound at all. It arrived September 4, 2026, through KOALA MUSIC, and it finds him singing, not rapping, over synth-driven, disco-tinged electropop.
That is not a small pivot. It is the sound of an artist who spent years perfecting one genre deciding to start over in a completely different one, mid-career, in full public view.
Shh… Track List At A Glance
Shh… runs 14 tracks across roughly 40 minutes and has circulated online as a two-disc release, split evenly across its A-side and B-side. Here is the complete tracklist, with runtimes and current community reception scores from Album of the Year, for reference and internal linking.
| No. | Track | Length | Disc |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | “TV” | 3:08 | Disc 1 |
| 2 | “Mulholland” | 2:38 | Disc 1 |
| 3 | “evil icon baby” | 2:21 | Disc 1 |
| 4 | “pleasure” | 3:17 | Disc 1 |
| 5 | “NAKED” | 3:27 | Disc 1 |
| 6 | “Razorblade kiss” | 3:09 | Disc 1 |
| 7 | “Pretty Girls” | 2:57 | Disc 1 |
| 8 | “andy warhol” | 2:56 | Disc 2 |
| 9 | “1 more” | 2:02 | Disc 2 |
| 10 | “BABYLON” | 2:26 | Disc 2 |
| 11 | “le royal monceau gatsby séance” | 2:21 | Disc 2 |
| 12 | “Limousine Music” | 3:08 | Disc 2 |
| 13 | “yes i glow in the dark but also i am the dark” | 3:02 | Disc 2 |
| 14 | “Flowers” | 3:24 | Disc 2 |
Full album streaming: Spotify · Apple Music · SoundCloud
From VIPERR To Synth-Pop: Who Is Kai Angel
Kai Angel is the stage name of Dmitry Olegovich Itskov, a rapper, producer, and sound engineer born February 4, 1997, in Bryansk, Russia. Before adopting the Kai Angel name, he recorded under the alias zavet. He is a co-founder of VIPERR, the creative duo and label he runs with fellow rapper 9mice, and the two built a fanbase on abrasive, rage-adjacent trap records like their joint EP Heavy Metal and its 2024 sequel, Heavy Metal 2.
Under his own name, Kai Angel spent 2023 and 2024 releasing a run of trap-leaning projects, including ANGEL MAY CRY, MARILYN MANSON, and GOD SYSTEM, all of which leaned into the same industrial, hyperpop-adjacent chaos that defined his work with 9mice.
That started to change with 2025’s damage, a stylistically restless record that pulled from EDM, indie rock, and old-school rage all at once. Reception to that shift was split. Some longtime fans praised the willingness to experiment, while others felt the record never fully committed to any one of its ideas. Shh… answers that criticism by going all the way in one direction: it is his first project built entirely around electropop, alt-pop, and synthpop songwriting, with barely a trace of his earlier rap delivery left on it.
How Shh… Compares To Kai Angel’s Past Work
| Project | Year | Primary Genre |
|---|---|---|
| Heavy Metal 2 (with 9mice) | 2024 | Rage / Trap |
| damage | 2025 | Genre-blending Alt-Rock/EDM |
| Shh… | 2026 | Electropop / Alt-Pop / Synthpop |
What stands out is that Shh… is scoring almost identically to damage despite sounding nothing like it. That suggests Kai Angel’s audience is following him through the genre shift rather than rewarding or punishing any single version of his sound, a sign of a fanbase more attached to the artist than to any specific style he works in.
The Sound Of Shh…
Officially, Shh… is tagged across electropop, alternative dance, alt-pop, electro-disco, indie rock, new rave, and synthpop, and its overall mood has been described by its own listing data as futuristic, summery, and sexual. That is a wide net for one album, and it lines up with what the tracklist suggests: shorter, hook-driven songs (several clock in under three minutes) built more for a dance floor or a convertible than a mosh pit.
“Limousine Music,” released as a standalone single back in April 2026, is the clearest example of the new lane. It is a moody, mid-tempo cut about emotional dependency and the ache of wanting closeness even when it is not good for you, closer in spirit to melodramatic synth-pop than anything in his trap catalog. It is also the single that has connected hardest with listeners so far, carrying the highest individual track score on the album.
Elsewhere, songs like “Mulholland,” “Pretty Girls,” and “le royal monceau gatsby séance,” title notwithstanding, are pulling similarly strong reception, suggesting the back half of the tracklist, informally treated online as the album’s second disc, may be where the record’s strongest run of songs lives. “yes i glow in the dark but also i am the dark” and “Flowers” have drawn a cooler response so far, both landing at the bottom of the album’s internal scoring, though neither has tanked outright.
Track By Track: Every Song On Shh…
1. “TV” The album opens on a quiet-verse, loud-chorus structure that owes an obvious debt to ’90s alt-rock, all fragile acoustic picking that eventually cracks open into distortion. Produced solo by Kai Angel, “TV” leans into a sun-bleached, faded-photograph nostalgia, built around imagery of vintage muscle cars and roadside motels, and it sets the emotional register, romantic, cinematic, slightly doomed, that carries through the rest of the record.
2. “Mulholland” Named for the David Lynch film, “Mulholland” is the album’s most explicitly cinematic moment, co-written with 730hahah, tjfr, and hunahuna. It is a song about obsession tipping into dependency, framing a relationship as something closer to possession than partnership, and it is one of the record’s most fully realized fusions of dread and desire.
3. “evil icon baby” Produced by makethatstefan and mp3mp3mp3, this is the most overtly electro-pop moment on the tracklist, a deliberate genre pivot even within an album full of them. It keeps the same charged, intoxicated emotional thread running through Shh…, just dressed in brighter, more club-ready production.
4. “pleasure” Produced by narxi, “pleasure” slows everything down into a warm, unhurried, sensual mood piece, less concerned with narrative than with atmosphere. It is one of the record’s most purely intimate tracks, prioritizing feeling over storytelling.
5. “NAKED” Teased on TikTok months ahead of the album’s release, “NAKED” takes its time, opening with patient, alternative-leaning instrumentation before slowly building rather than rushing to a hook. It rewards a full, attentive listen more than a quick scroll.
6. “Razorblade kiss” A heavier, more atmospheric cut that leans into what’s become one of Kai Angel’s calling cards: production that sits somewhere between digital melancholy and raw emotional weight. It is not an easy or immediate song, but it lingers well after it ends.
7. “Pretty Girls” Released as a pre-album single in late May 2026 with an accompanying music video, “Pretty Girls” is one of the record’s most immediate, hook-driven moments, built around a chanted, na-na-na refrain and imagery of designer labels, late nights, and addictive, painful romance. It is also one of the clearest signals of the album’s full pivot toward pop songwriting.
8. “andy warhol” Co-written with Pxlsdead and arranged by Makethatstefan and Pxlsdead, this is a brasher, fame-and-fashion-obsessed pop anthem, name-checking designer brands and Los Angeles nightlife while chasing a magnetic, hard-to-pin-down love interest. It is one of the more purely fun, maximalist moments on the tracklist.
9. “1 more” The shortest and most aggressive song on the album, “1 more” strips away the record’s softer textures in favor of a suffocating, industrial atmosphere, the clearest holdover from Kai Angel’s rap and rage roots. It functions as a jolt of tension in the middle of an otherwise melodic project.
10. “BABYLON” A tense, possessive love song that leans directly into Kai Angel’s own stage name, repeatedly asking whether an “angel” is on the other end of the phone. It treats volatility and intensity as their own kind of love language, framing a chaotic relationship as something the narrator finds magnetic rather than frightening.
11. “le royal monceau gatsby séance” Written with narxi and owleeng, this track imagines a boozy, glamorous night that never quite happened, name-checking the storied Parisian hotel and leaning on Gatsby-era imagery of parties, champagne, and missed connections. It is wistful and a little theatrical, one of the record’s most narratively vivid songs.
12. “Limousine Music” Originally released as a standalone single in April 2026, this is the album’s emotional center and its best-received track by a clear margin. A moody meditation on love, regret, and emotional dependency, it captures the ache of wanting closeness even when it isn’t good for you, and its melodic restraint marks the clearest distance yet between this version of Kai Angel and his earlier rap catalog.
13. “yes i glow in the dark but also i am the dark” Written and produced with narxi, this is the album’s most minimalist entry, built around a repeated, mantra-like chorus rather than a traditional verse structure. It is a stark, chant-driven mood piece, and its sparseness has made it a more divisive listen than the rest of the tracklist.
14. “Flowers” Closing the album on a fully acoustic instrumental, “Flowers” strips away the layered production that defines most of Shh… in favor of something quieter and more tender. Kai Angel’s vocal here is noticeably more delicate and sensual than elsewhere on the record, and the song ends the project on restraint rather than spectacle.
Why Shh… Matters
Genre reinvention is common in pop, but it is rarer, and riskier, in the trap and rage scenes Kai Angel came up in, where a sound change can read as inauthentic to a core fanbase built around aggression and noise. Shh… is a full-scale bet that his audience will follow him into gentler, more melodic territory, and early numbers suggest that bet is at least paying off on par with his last release, even if it has not yet produced a runaway critical consensus.
Whether Shh… ends up remembered as a transitional record or as the start of a new permanent lane for Kai Angel likely depends on what he does next. But as a standalone project, it is a genuinely bold left turn from an artist who did not have to make one.
