DJ Snake ‘Nomad’ review: finding emotion in chaos

Following two platinum albums (Encore and Carte Blanche) and over 30 billion streams, Nomad represents the next chapter in the global DJ Snake experiment. EDM-trap oracles and ravers know he can deliver festival-shaking bangers: tunes like ‘Propaganda’ and ‘Turn Down for What’ prove he can shell a system good and proper. Nomad features tracks tailored for mass appeal but also reveals the duality of thriving in both commercial and some scene-rooted spaces.

Stand out tracks include ‘Patience’, a rework of ‘Sabali’ by music duo Amadou & Mariam, the blind Malian couple whose voices have carried generations of joy and grief. Snake’s production holds space for that energy – conveying themes of love, separation, migration – and is amplified by a short film that follows a couple torn apart by the draconian reality of borders. It’s the emotional heart of the album for this reviewer, and one of Snake’s most sincere and authentic moments to date.

Nomad spans 17 tracks and was five years in the making. Snake and his team filtered down the final selection from some 300 tracks. EDM-trap, Afrobeat, north African street music, reggaeton, dubstep, dancehall, and K-pop are among the styles stitched together with Snake’s signature maximalism.  

TRXGGX links up with Dillon Francis on ‘Bring the House Down’ – a filthy, high-octane trap anthem built for festival chaos. It’s the kind of track that could easily soundtrack a Fast & Furious film or a neon-soaked cyberpunk scene.

Don Toliver’s smooth vocals glide effortlessly through hip-hop/R&B-inflected crossover track  ‘Something Wrong’. The Afro-house groove on ‘Company’ featuring the sensational Bantu is a standout moment, while ‘Teka’ with Peso Pluma injects vibrant Latino electronics into the album. High energy reggaeton number ‘Noventa’ with J Balvin carries a distinct sense of ‘90s nostalgia, while the trap-hip-hop-club EDM of ‘Tsunami’ with Future & Travis Scott is engineered for massive sound systems. The album flits unapologetically between styles, as on ‘Cairo Express’, which channels Middle Eastern street sounds through Snake’s signature dance-production lens, and on Phil Collins’ ‘Paradise’ featuring Bipolar Sunshine. 

Nomad aims for mass appeal, delivered through catchy, polished tracks like ‘In the Dark’ featuring Stray Kids, tapping into the global phenomena of K-pop.

Notably, it doesn’t feature any French or Algerian acts – or major Maghreb fire – this is coming later, he says – just not on this album. Nomad is a testosterone-fuelled album, with a mostly male lineup of collaborators – Mariam on ‘Patience’ being the notable exception. That masculinity is also depicted by the aggressive, furious chants and percussive intensity of industrial-hybrid tracks like ‘Reloaded’ – which reimagines Marylin Manson’s ‘This Is the New Shit’. It’s a wild contrast to the dancehall tonic of ‘Bam Bam’ featuring Damian Marley (nice, but nope, not an edit of the Sister Nancy classic).

The album reflects the Indian, Caribbean, African, Middle Eastern influences that shaped Snake and celebrates multiculturalism in a polarised world. Nomad is commercially ambitious, with rough edges that retain semi-underground appeal – a duality he’s been navigating ever since 2011. It proves his knack for spotting talent like Bantu, TRXGGX, Space Laces and Bipolar Sunshine before they really blow – or for boosting the visibility of acts like Amadou & Mariam and Peso Pluma  – just as he did on earlier albums with MØ, AlunaGeorge and Shenseea. It’s evident Snake knows a good collaborator when he hears one – and he knows a story that will resonate with his zillions of followers.