Elmiene x Gessime Yassine - Timeless Truths
They were back, then they were gone and now they're back again
The relationship between art and people is symbiotic. We change with the world but we change the world also. Art imitates life. Life imitates art. As a result, everything in art is always moving because people are always moving. Nothing stays the same for long and everything ‘new’ might actually be pretty old. Is anything actually ‘invented’ anymore or is it just rediscovered?
Elmiene is an artist with a ‘new’ sound in R&B except it’s not really new as much as it is refreshing. It’s neo-soul at it’s most brilliant. It’s the sound trailblazed by D’Angelo, Questlove, Erykah Badu and Q-Tip. A sound which slows the world down a bit, humanises it and litters vulnerability all over it. It’s a sound that was once lost, then found again, then lost again and now Elmiene has picked the mantle back up in British music.
Similarly the ‘death of entertainers’ in football didn’t only start a few years ago when the world moved past them. They’ve been dying for decades only to be reborn a few years later when the world needs them again.
And so when a player like Gessime Yassine enters the fold, you’re in awe because he’s a pure entertainer doing things that seem to stretch the frontiers of what normally seems possible on a football pitch. His imagination and his guile inspires you but as new and innovative he seems, there’s still the waft of nostalgia you feel in every touch and every action. Because Yassine is new and old. Just like Elmiene.
Abdala ‘Elmiene’ Elamin. Born in Frankfurt, 2001 as the son of Sudanese and English parents. Growing up in Oxford, England to the sounds of Craig David, Usher and D’Angelo - the 25 year old’s self-prescribed geekiness made him infatuated with the genre. An infatuation which grew from drowning himself in the likes of Jodeci and Jagged Edge until he was posting covers of himself singing famous R&B songs on YouTube.
It was his cover of the late D’Angelo’s ‘How Does it Feel?’ which was the catalyst for his fame. It went extremely viral. Being able to say you did justice to a song like that justice is an incredibly hard task but Elmiene, embraced in his hoodie, sliders and laconic persona made it look a walk in the park. From that point in 2021, his stock has risen extraordinarily. Collaborations with Stormzy, Sampha and Raphael Saadiq were created and conquered whilst his album ‘Sounds for Someone’ released March this year debuted at number 1 on the Hip Hop & R&B charts.
What grabs you instantly when you hear Elmiene is his voice. It’s phenomenal. It bounces from being soft and elegant to powerful and gripping depending on what the song needs. His lyrics are personal and introspective, a reflection of the music he was listening to as a child and also offers a glimpse at the person he is behind the mic. His presence is serene, he warms up a stage before ripping it to shreds with his voice. His music swallows you whole before it spits you back out in the early 2000s where everything seems easier and hopeful.
The whole feeling behind him and his music just warms the soul. It makes you happy despite the message of some of his more gloomy songs. Maybe it doesn’t make you happy, it maybe just makes you feel, a lot. And that’s what makes him authentically nostalgic.
He doesn’t try to imitate with his voice, he melds together all the great attributes of all the artists he loved as a kid to create something unique and his supposed little regard for fame only heightens his humility. Chasing a feeling instead of a hit - that's what the forefounders of the genre were all about. He’s an artist that can go on stage and perform for an hour with nothing but a mic in his hand and leave everybody speechless. I know because I’ve been a reciprocate of one of his live shows.
His talent is extraordinary and he’s achieved so much in such a short space of time. Songs such as ‘Someday’, ‘Useless Without You’ and ‘Light Work’ do well to capture the peak of his brilliance but you’d be heavily missing out if those were the only songs of his you gave a listen to. An old soul with his heart seemingly in the right place, this is an artist who will likely go on to achieve great things.
Gessime Yassine is, as far as young footballers go, one of the oldest souls around too. That’s because he’d rather lose the ball taking a risk than passing backwards and being safe. He’s the antithesis of most instructions bellowed at you by modern-day coaches and for that - he deserves attention.
My first encounter with the 20 year old winger was at last year’s u20 World Cup. Yassine, the smallest player on 90% of the pitches he played on - was on a personal mission to take the piss out of anyone he came into contact with. Players 5 inches taller than him and double his weight couldn’t do anything but get embarrassed by the minute Moroccan who poses a haircut that belongs in 1930.
He was incredible and it was the heart he had to keep going despite get kicked to pieces which was noted more than anything. Against France in particular, he was floating past players as they helplessly pulled, dragged and kicked their way into the book against him. But he wasn’t deterred once. Went down and got back up. Kept on going at them, kept on beating them.
And these performances on the way to winning the gold medal at the tournament brought a lot of attention to the right winger. That’s because Strasbourg pounced in January and secured his signature before any club could lay the groundwork. He left Ligue 2 and Dunkerque behind for BlueCo’s myriad of mess but it seems to have worked out for him.
Yassine is a young attacker who still dares to delight. Though he’s not the fastest nor the tallest, his technical ability sticks out as soon as you begin to watch him. He has that North African technical brilliance which still eludes most other countries but finds itself in almost all of the footballers Algeria and Morocco produce. He has a low centre of gravity and is incredibly agile to the point where he’s almost too slippery for defenders to get a hold on.
He’s wriggly and cunning. He strives for the personal satisfaction of making someone look stupid on a football pitch and this often happens. Because of his lack of physical gifts, his whole career has been built on him being more gifted with his brain as well as his feet. Yassine is audacious with his passes - he sees gaps opening and wastes no time trying to exploit them. Sometimes to the detriment of his team’s possession, but sometimes you have to take a risk.
That’s what is so great about the 20 year old Yassine. He hasn’t been programmed like most of the other young forwards coming through to pass back, stay there and then go here. He’s a free spirit. Create first, ask questions later. His feet whizz when they have the ball and fans begin creeping off their seat.
The left-footed magician has already scored two more goals for Strasbourg this season than last thanks to a double at the hands of Lens on the weekend. And output is the main thing holding him back from a big move. Only 1 goal contribution in 19 games for Strasbourg last season. That’s eye-catching forn all the wrong reasons.
Like every player with a passion for creating, he sometimes makes ill-advised decisions in the final third. Decisions that you attribute to inexperience and rawness but decisions that need to be honed and improved to get to that level - and it already looks like that’s on it’s way. Stylistically, he’s similar in stature and gait to Konstantinos Karestas who’s already lighting up the Bundesliga with Dortmund. But dare I say, he’s got even more imagination than the Greek wonderkid?
Yassine belongs to the school of Cherki, Hazard and Payet. Genius players who can create from anywhere on the pitch but whose maverick-like tendencies can get mistaken for poor attitude and other less-desired characteristics. But being a footballer who can pick locks is becoming all the rage once again as coaches realise they can’t ‘minimise risk’ their way to glory if everyone else is doing the same.
Maresca benched Cherki in GW1 of the Premier League season, brought him on and he won the game with two assists. Next game he started and he grabbed 2 goals. We’ve seen the difference Palmer has been making already, freed from the shackles and ‘safe zones’ of last season and Odegaard is beginning again this year, maybe afforded more freedom by Arteta. Entertainers are on their way back to football.
Yassine is a glimpse at the future as well as an ode to the past. He plays the game like he enjoys it and that’s all you can really ask for.
Both Elmiene and Gessime Yassine are possessed with talent that few have. Both are the faces of a wave of ingenuity and insouciance that again beckons in their respective fields. They’re the past and the future rolled into one and that makes them and their craft timeless.
Watch out because they’re ready to make the world feel again.