At its worst, EDM could be described as a male DJ singing bullshit lyrics that are made to mindlessly dance to. This was never the aspiration of 23-year-old Inci Gürün, the rising dance-pop juggernaut who makes club-ready music under the name INJI. “I got confused when I started in dance music because it’s kind of understood that you don't have to listen to the lyrics,” she says. “That’s not what I want to make at all. Even though a lot of the lyrics are not deep, I actually wanted to talk about stuff that was also really important to me.” 

In the brief two years since the Turkish-born singer broke out off the back of her 2022 house-soaked TikTok hit “GASLIGHT,” it’s her winking tongue-in-cheek lyricism — wrapped up in a thumping dance-music bow — that, indeed, has become her calling card. Phrases like “gaslight, gatekeep,” and “Let’s roll, MADLEINE,” linger in your mind like a mouth-watering aftertaste. On her second EP, WE GOOD, a five-song rush of sticky dancefloor joints that hop from jangling funk-disco to fist-pumping 2010s recession pop, she solidifies her musical voice, touching on everything from aging to dating and riding out bad days.

INJI would be the first to describe her budding path as an artist as “unbelievable” and coming “out of nowhere,” but her musical roots stretch deep. Born and raised in Istanbul, she began attending the city’s prestigious music conservatory for classical piano when she was seven. A move to the U.K. in her teenage years introduced her to church choirs and classical and jazz singing — as well as the cities’ thriving ecosystem of dance music.

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