LOVERBOY resurrected romance in the digital age with his 8-bit trap track, BVLLY –

With BVLLY, LOVERBOY more than lives up to his moniker. Short and irrefutably sweet, the track pulls his heartstrings taut through its synth lines, inviting listeners to escape into an 8-bit expanse of polyphonic emotion. It’s a track that lets vulnerability take centre stage without sacrificing confidence, proving that bravado will always pale in comparison to what tenderness and charisma can bring to the table. Romance hasn’t vanished from hip-hop; it’s simply been resurrected here through a new digital language, one pixelated pulse at a time.

BVLLY plays with contrast in a way that feels instinctive rather than engineered. The trap rhythms snap beneath waves of nostalgic chiptune textures, creating a space where vulnerability doesn’t feel like weakness but like an act of rebellion against the genre’s harder edges. LOVERBOY doesn’t posture; he emotes, and that refusal to harden the emotional core of his work gives BVLLY its weight.

Born in New York City to Syrian and Algerian parents, LOVERBOY (Khaled) moved to Geneva after 9/11 before making England home at seventeen. Sensitivity has always been his compass, shaped by a youth spent surrounded by violence and disillusionment, and softened by an escape into cartoons and cinema. That storytelling instinct carries through his music, which he sees as therapy and a digital diary of feeling, championing unity, peace and love in a world already saturated with empty flexes. BVLLY is that mission distilled into sound — intimate, expressive, and reaching for connection rather than conquest.

BVLLY is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Apple Music.

Review by Amelia Vandergast