For the past year, whenever someone has asked what music I’m most excited about right now, I’ve asked whether they’ve tuned into Martinican shatta. French West Indian dancehall rap is bold, loud, outrageously sexy, and impossible to pin down, channeling a unique constellation of rhythmic heritage (dancehall, trap, zouk, soca) into beats that demand you shake and hustle. The production on MOLIY’s 2025 smash “Shake It to the Max” was inspired in part by shatta, and it’s the Martincian remix with stars Kalash and Maureen that went platinum at my house. But there’s no rising artist easier to get excited about in this niche but hot scene than Meryl, aka Cindy Elismar, a rapper and singer whose vocal dexterity and understated intensity stand out on just about every track.
Her new album, La Dame, unites slower and more sentimental shatta ballads with the thumping dancefloor heaters that first drew me to her music. Meryl’s approach is broad enough to capture shatta’s party spirit and rich sensuality, deep enough to touch on subjects like family, heartache, and homesickness (or, in any case, to wish “goodbye to the side chicks and hoes”). This is her third full-length release following her debut tape and 2024’s Caviar 1; she’s getting the je ne sais quoi dialed in with a go-to circle of producers, a way longer guest list, and harder-hitting sounds, like the posse cut “Chaos,” that reflect the influence and reach of contemporary drill.
Like much dancehall, shatta is primarily a singles genre and some of my all-time favorite Meryl songs feel too high-octane for an album, or at least the albums she’s released so far: They’re singles like the goes-crazy “Patate” with St. Lucia’s BlackBoy, the super horny bouyon track “La Boue” with Guadeloupe’s Lestef KJF Boyz, or (two reliable names in this scene) DJ Tutuss and Mikado’s East Indian-accented beat for “BADMIND.” Most of La Dame is not quite that intense, but when the pace escalates on “Instructions” with French Congolese singer Theodora, the moody femme fatale duet “Coco Chanel” with French singer Eva, and “Shatta Confessions” with Martinican singer N’Ken, you really hear what Meryl’s mixture of take-no-prisoners verbal attack and “Who, me?” chill can do. She’s just as unfazed on the supercharged Guadeloupe bouyon collaborations that light up the second half: “Vite Fait” with Pinpin OSP and “Castries” with Miimii KDS, whose discography—currently three songs—is all hits.
These are La Dame’s most essential tracks, but the full album demonstrates the flexibility of shatta’s musical and emotional range, and if you understand a little Creole or French, you will quickly come to appreciate Meryl’s tough-gal charm. She is one cool customer until she spies a baddie in a mini bikini. She tells us what her homies say when the blunt is really hitting—“couteau,” knife—and how they’ve dreamed of hustling for “la vie Jeff Bezos.” Her lyrical flourishes always feel a little wilder than real life, like when she offers to slash a cheater’s tires and celebrate with a bonfire, or when she hypes up her lover by telling her they’ll wear sunglasses in the club like “Chlöe et Burna.”
The second reason Meryl’s music feels so exciting right now is the work she’s putting in to highlight the artists she’s excited about, with credits on this album for Martinican producer DJ Vitrine and a whole cast of pan-Antillean and Francophone rappers: Lawskie (Martinique), Latop (Guadeloupe), Poplane and Lion P (French Guiana), Zequin and R2 (France), and LRB490 (Réunion). There is exciting music happening all across this sphere if you look for it, and La Dame is one great place to start. Meryl’s playing an arena show in Paris this October that’s already sold out—I’m so grateful to live in the time of the French Creole sapphic dancehall grind anthem, and she’s taking it worldwide.
