Sampling Memory: The Experimental Soul of ladé's Nollywood Nightmares [EP Review]

ladé’s six-track project Nollywood Nightmares turns the texture of error, distortion, and DIY process into something intentional and emotionally precise. It’s an experimental statement about what it means to create from within limitation, and to find beauty in the rough edges that mainstream polish often erases.

Nollywood Nightmares cover by Aminat A

ladé is a Nigerian-Scottish producer whose work feels lived-in, intuitive, and deeply tactile. They build their tracks from memory and emotion, layering samples and textures that carry both imperfection and intention. Rooted in abstract hip-hop and experimental sampling, their music translates universal human experiences: joy, grief, remembrance, into sound, letting the rough edges of production become part of the story. Each beat holds evidence of process, of decision-making in real time, creating soundscapes that are as much about feeling as they are about form.

ladé by @7pg___ 

Nollywood Nightmares is built out of memory. Those Nollywood films that filled their mum’s house growing up, stacked DVDs and buzzing televisions, shaping their sense of story long before they started making beats. What stayed with them wasn’t just the drama or humour of those films, but their rawness. “Imperfection can still be iconic,” they write, and Nollywood Nightmares proves that conviction in sound. The EP’s grainy samples, off-balance loops, and abrupt transitions echo the unfiltered energy of the films they grew up on: resourceful, handmade, yet capable of leaving a mark that travels far beyond its origins.

by @7pg___ 

But Nollywood Nightmares is self-portraiture. It maps the intersection of resilience, self-belief, and vulnerability. ladé’s creative process, as they describe it, is intuitive: guided less by structure than by feeling. “I have no idea what it’s going to sound like,” they admit, “I just know I like the sample and want to make it mine.” That approach gives the project its tactile sense of immediacy. You can hear decisions being made mid-beat, the presence of the artist inside their process.

Across the EP, illusion operates as a recurring theme. On “King(!)”, ladé samples from Open Fire and Gamblers, a Nollywood story about a man who fakes a life abroad to appear successful to his village. In their words, it reflects how many people in diasporic and immigrant communities perform success while carrying quiet struggles. The beat, bright on the surface, becomes a kind of mask and a reflection of the tension between appearance and truth. ladé translates social commentary into sound design, using irony as rhythm.

by @7pg___ 

That instinct to turn life’s contradictions into music runs throughout the project. “Keep That!” emerged from a moment of personal exhaustion: balancing university, work, and mental health while losing trust in friends. The phrase “keep that,” they explain, came to them accidentally through the samples themselves, as if the beat was talking back, refusing negativity. For ladé, that act of turning pain into production marked a shift: the realisation that emotion could be fuel rather than weight.

This process of transmutation, stress into rhythm, heartbreak into texture, shapes the entire record. Tracks like “A Better Day!” and “Feeling!” don’t just sound hopeful; they enact hope through creation. ladé made them in moments of fatigue and release, using late-night sessions to transform burnout into movement. Their beats capture what it means to keep going, not through grand triumph but through persistence, through sound as small proof of life.

@7pg___ 

Even “Python!”, the EP’s closer, loops back to the theme of illusion. A sample they once believed to be Chinese city pop turns out to be British musicians under a pseudonym, another example of misdirection. Instead of discarding it, they lean in. “Things aren’t always what they seem,” they note, connecting that discovery to the way Nollywood often exaggerates or disguises reality. The track becomes a playful yet pointed reflection on perception, how art and identity are often filtered through misunderstanding and illusion.

The collaborative spirit running through Nollywood Nightmares extends its reach beyond the personal. ladé brings in underground artists from both the UK and the US: 32Burden, THEFOODLORD, Amil Berlin, and Omari Alltimer, each adding their own texture to their sonic world. Rather than treating features as decoration, they fold them into the project’s emotional fabric; their verses feel like echoes of the same interior language they’re speaking. Visual artist Aminat A’s cover design completes that circle of collaboration, turning Nollywood Nightmares into a small ecosystem of creative kinship and a testament to how community keeps independent work alive.

@7pg___ 

What makes Nollywood Nightmares so compelling is that ladé never cleans up the evidence of the process. They leave the seams visible. The late nights, the emotional revisions, the quiet persistence of someone building a sound world from what’s at hand. The imperfections aren’t mistakes; they’re memory. The music feels grounded yet moving. Each track holds part of their learning curve, the sound of becoming comfortable within discomfort.

In the end, Nollywood Nightmares feels more than an EP; it's also an experiment in honesty. ladé doesn’t disguise where they come from or what shaped them. They honour the rough textures of Nollywood not as kitsch but as philosophy and proof that art doesn’t need gloss to have gravity. Like the films that inspired them, their music carries the pulse of survival, humour, illusion, and truth.  The unpolished archive of a creative mind finding its own rhythm.