TWENTY-TWO-year-old North Bergen, New Jersey, rapper-singer 070 Shake, a.k.a. Danielle Balbuena, hit mainstream radar via Kanye West’s Wyoming sessions in 2018, functioning as fluid superego on “Violent Crimes” and “Ghost Town,” from his album Ye, and Pusha T’s “Santeria.” Born to a Dominican immigrant mom, Shake grew up on Lauryn Hill and My Chemical Romance. Her vocals can come hard and soft, in English and Spanish, with verses suggesting a fierce, strong, proud, brave, spiritual person who’s also hungry, searching, scared, self-loathing, and self-destructive — like plenty of humans, especially in their early twenties.
Shake’s enveloping debut LP, Modus Vivendi, charts desire and space, outer and inner — it’s an emo-rap Dark Side of the Moon. Songs address a lover, and perhaps Balbuena, too. The delivery can be slurred…
