“I was driving home from a date in Sentul, then I saw all these billboards lit up,” reminisced Kareem Soenharjo. “It had just rained, and the puddles on the streets were reflecting the lights. I’ve always taken these sights for granted. It was beautiful.”

Kareem is in love now, not just with his partner, who he sheepishly credits with “giving him a reason to wake up with a smile”, but with life in general. The rapper exudes “nice person energy”, as he puts it. His semi-steady gig as a DJ and in-demand music producer pays the bills. He’s moving out of the family home and exercising regularly.

Things are falling into place. He’s 25.

This has not always been the case. Since his emergence half a decade ago as one of the most acclaimed producer/rappers in the nation’s capital, Kareem has made being dysfunctional an art form. His projects have, in his own words, always painted a “depressive gutter view” of Jakarta, one in which the skies are forever gray, payday always arrives late and childhood dreams have given way to economic anxiety and generational trauma.

After a series of acclaimed singles and EPs, his debut album monkshood (2018) delved into that imagery in visceral detail. Flaunting his love for jazz and experimental rock while grounding them in a relentlessly moody atmosphere, Kareem’s rap offers a bleak and refreshingly honest take on early 2020s life in Jakarta.

He changed tack soon after, forming supergroup BAPAK and releasing Miasma Tahun Asu (2020), an album both indebted to chaotic experimental rock hero The Lightning Bolt and somber indie rock siren King Krule. Eschewing his usual rap for a raw, unpolished vocal punch, Miasma finds him vividly dissecting his slowly deteriorating mental state. Bold and relentlessly beautiful, it was nevertheless an emotionally gory album.

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