Magi Merlin

edited by Ljós Berinn

Born in Saint-Lazare, in the Montréal suburbs, by age five she was already dictating poems to her mother to write down. Magi Merlin grew up suspended between dance and writing, two languages that still intertwine today in her body and her voice. At nineteen she left the suburbs for the city and began carving out a sound that escapes every definition. She's the one who coined the term “Broken R&B”: an amalgam of punk, neo-soul and electronics, fragmented and deliberately imperfect. More than a label, it's a statement of intent. Her lyrics are haunted by racism, heteronormativity and the weight capitalism places on art, while her influences range from Kendrick Lamar to Rosalía, from Frank Ocean to whatever doesn't have a name yet.

After the EPs “Gone Girl” (2022) and “A Weird Little Dog” (2025), 2026 brings her first true album, “Power House”. The title, she says, is “anyone, with all their emotions and contradictions, who is simply trying to be themselves without judgment”. Preceded by “POPSTAR” and “SpiceKick”, the record is a ritual of multiplicity: not a portrait, but a house full of rooms, all inhabited at once. Magi Merlin doesn't try to define herself once and for all. She'd rather dance within her own contradictions, without asking permission.