Sudanese rapper Soulja turns Drake’s ‘Views’ upside down with his latest EP, ‘0 Views’. Accompanied by a documentary-style short film, the four-track project extends the EP’s themes into a visual world of isolation, distraction, and self-reflection.
The title immediately recalls Drake’s 2016 album ‘Views’, but where Drake’s project was framed around the visibility and isolation that come with reaching the top, Soulja’s ‘0 Views’ turns its gaze toward the other end of the spectrum, exploring the quiet, unseen moments before anyone is watching. Across its roughly eight-minute runtime, Soulja moves between inner monologues, humor, anxiety, and self-reliance, using a genre-blending palette that keeps the project intimate without becoming sonically restrained.
The EP opens with an anxious, self-confrontational tone, resembling a conversation with oneself in the mirror. Lush synths, airy textures, and deep bass create a hazy atmosphere as Soulja delivers a stream-of-consciousness reflection on patience, hard work, belief, and the pressure of figuring things out alone. As the track develops, warm guitars and a fuller beat gradually enter the picture, giving the song a sense of release while preserving its melancholic weight.
‘DAWAMA’, produced by Khayyat, loosens that tension with a slower, laid-back hip-hop groove built around squiggly guitar lines and a buoyant bassline. Soulja becomes more playful here, using humor to approach the same emotional territory from a different angle. With no money for therapy, he turns to his barber as an unlikely outlet, transforming an everyday interaction into a space for confession. Beneath the jokes, however, the track remains deeply introspective, with Soulja continuing to weave personal reflection and Sudanese identity into his writing.
Produced by frequent collaborator 77, ‘LOOKLOOK’ shifts the energy with heavy bass and a trap-focused rhythm. Soulja plays with vocal inflection and repeated syllables to reinforce the track’s assertive, almost restless energy, creating a sharper contrast with the introspection of the tracks before it.
The EP closes with ‘JAWAB’, built on a chilled-out trap rhythm, subtle finger snaps, and clean guitar lines. Soulja shifts between his chest and head voice as he turns toward accountability and resolution, before the production gradually opens up into expressive guitar and synth passages that give the project a more expansive final moment.
Visually, the short film moves alongside the EP’s shifting emotional states. Played by Dina Manan, the protagonist is first introduced alone at home, absorbed in her thoughts and moving through increasingly surreal moments before reaching a cathartic breaking point. She later dresses in a sparkly outfit and prepares to host a lively gathering, creating a striking contrast between the heaviness of her inner world and the energy of the social space around her. What initially appears to be a casual hangout is revealed to exist entirely inside the protagonist’s head, just as her friends actually arrive at the door. Frantic editing cuts between her getting ready and imagining herself at the center of attention, capturing the anxiety of moving from isolation into a social world.
The story eventually finds a quieter sense of release. After spending much of the film caught between solitude and imagined connection, the protagonist takes a caged bird into her car, drives toward the ocean, and sets it free on the shore. The image offers a fitting conclusion to the EP’s recurring tension between confinement and freedom, suggesting movement beyond the internal space that has dominated the story.
