BY ALINA M.

In 2024, killamisha released Underground Princess, a ten-track album exploring her identity as an artist. A female, Malay artist more specifically. It’s an album that’s unapologetically herself, and that comes with a burden for her to not be. The release sparked controversy, so loud with vicious keyboard warrior insults, legal authority involvement and even death threats which can still be found on her Instagram account, that forced her into a hiatus.

When she returned last August, on Merdeka day to be exact, she recalled  her arrest and that traumatic experience of authorities’ intrusion into her creative freedom. As she confessed, “At some point last year, I couldn’t comprehend making music ever again, I thought I had lost my voice for good.” But more than just a confession, she also returned with Miss Malaysia Mixtape, a two-track creative survival project.

Miss Malaysia Mixtape emerged as a collaboration with producer DJ Waste, delivering two tracks: “Sensasi Seksaan Kubur” and “Banned in KL.” The mixtape turned out substantially more artistic, with real stories behind it that build resilience towards her critics and nonsensical haters. It was as if she was trying to make a point that her return means her screams can’t be silenced. And both tracks, fueled by wounds from persecution, examining the intersection of art, gender and authority, manifested it.

If we rewind the time, the snowball of her backlash that eventually led to her hiatus could be traced back to 9th March 2024 at Gerak Luu Fest. Performing at her first festival ever, her showmanship denounced for the auto-tuned laced screaming and puzzling theatricalities were heavily scrutinised and covered by click bait media never uttered her name in their portals before. Her singing especially, was likened to the sound of infidels getting tortured in the grave, a criticism she later turned into the title of track ““Sensasi Seksaan Kubur”. The track hits with fast-paced, club-ready energy that builds and maintains its momentum through most of its runtime. Throbbing EDM spirit drives the song forward before the energy dips slightly as it transitions to young female voices expressing displeasure towards condemnatory eyes. The annoyed tone gives body to the whole song, addressing how people made a sensation out of her musical style, hinting listeners to mind your own business and respect the right to be or do anything one pleases. The production gets clever toward the closing — those gamelan-like synth effects create a shimmering sound that adds a slightly mystic and Nusantara touch. To top it off, she includes a few seconds of  police car sirens, a pointed nod to her arrest. What this track presents simply is her daring enough to show it, despite making music in a scene where superficiality gets across.

When she screamed and jumped around on the Gerak Lu Fest stage last year, it accidentally became an unplanned experiment to elicit polarising reactions from the general audience, unprepared, unprovoked to witness an artist like her.  In response, she launches “They think they God / they try to send me to hell,” into “Banned in KL” followed by “I do this for real, I’m trailblazing, can’t you tell?” The track cranks up the tempo even faster, delivering club-ready beats layered with atmospheric suspense lurking in the shadows. Heavy bass and synth pulses create that EDM throb, this time the energy never drops, it’s persistent. killamisha’s rap comes through with noticeable vocal processing and she flows rapidly. DJ Waste’s production maintains tension throughout, setting the Miss Malaysia motif — which makes this an irony to conventional idealism about women or the music industry in general. She’s been signaling that killamisha is an innovation, committed to her ideology. “Banned in KL” is not for sale nor to be liked. Instead, a playful line repeats through the track — “Nobody told me I was banned in KL.”

Every artist injects that distinct personalities to tell their stories: with killamisha, her bold lyrics and brave visuals give off reckless energy, but also serve coming-of-age themes with a forgive-and-forget attitude. The punky traits combined with princess aesthetics, love for rempit culture, leopard print It-Girl energy and metropolitanism represent the unconventionality of a Malay woman. Miss Malaysia Mixtape stands as both artistic statement and personal manifesto — a defiant response to a system that tried to silence her voice. killamisha turned her persecution into power, her trauma into triumph. Her refusal to bow, both artistically and personally, makes Miss Malaysia Mixtape a necessary, if uncomfortable, mirror to Malaysian society’s treatment of female artists who dare to speak their truth.

Alina M. writes prose poetry and journal entries that explore love, loss, identity, and escapism. Having grown up on poetry and classical literature, she blends raw and intimate language with personal observation and philosophical reflection.