No one loves perfume quite like fakemink. The UK rapper has been name-checking scent references with almost the same intensity as he’s dropped singles over the past couple of years. Names like Tom Ford, Initio, Creed and more have been scattered throughout the artist’s lyrics in his previous releases, alongside countless references to scent in general.

Beyond that, he has often posted perfumes on his socials, especially on his spam account, with various glassy bottles left half-visible in the frame for hardcore fans to decipher their branding.

Now, as he drops his long-awaited album, Terrified, he’s at it again. The 19-track project charts a journey through temptation, fame and the loss of innocence. Within that, perfume is used interchangably as a symbol of seduction, lust, and luxury.

Below, we break down five tracks and their references – get your wishlists ready.

CREED

We begin with “Creed”, a track that shares its name with the luxury fragrance house. It’s a brand the singer has referenced previously, on the track “101”, where he sings: “Smell like gelato smoke so I gotta put the Creed on.”

This time, there is a religious connotation, in keeping with the album’s larger themes of heaven, hell and transcendence. Fakemink also sings: “She left her scent in my bones / Her scent on my clothes / Her scent on my sheets / Fill the room and my nose.” Here, he uses the idea of scent being left behind as a wider metaphor for how intimacy can become so intense it is absorbed into the body and impossible to shake. He closes the track with the lyrics: “We closer than close / Yeah she touching my soul.”

NIGHT, BLOOMING JASMINE

Dropped last month as Terrified’s lead single, “Night, Blooming Jasmine” takes its name from the epitaph on David Lynch’s gravestone. The track opens immediately with “Ayy, Lola at the coat check, a Venus on the boat deck”, as fakemink delivers one of his most niche perfume references yet.

The lyric nods to a fragrance by the London-based house Discothèque, whose perfumes are inspired by iconic club spaces around the world. Lola at Coat Check – one of the brand’s scents – references a New York club night from 1992: Lola is a fictional character dreamt up to embody the scent of a cloakroom worker with a blunt bob, gapped teeth, and a lily tattoo.

ESSEX GIRLS

Honouring his hometown, Basildon in Essex, the London(-ish) saviour shouts out two perfume brands on this track. The first is luxury perfume house Kilian (spelt with an extra l in the Mink-verse), which is part of the Hennessy cognac empire.

Although no scent is named directly, the lyric “archangels and fame” is possibly a nod to Kilian’s Angels’ Share, one of the house’s most recognisable fragrances. Later in the track, fakemink layers up his scents with the line “I really got Killian on me I had to mix it with the Memo” – a reference to the Parisian perfume house Memo.

FORGET ME NOT

Fakemink loves Tom Ford. He has name-checked the designer across multiple tracks in his discography, most explicitly in ”Little”, where he sings ”Tom Ford Cologne you know I got eight of them”.

Now it seems he’s met his match in “Forget Me Not”, as he encounters Shanghai Lily, a popular Tom Ford scent for women: "Girl you my Shanghai Lily / Cream sweet chantilly aaah”. Just wait until he learns about Le Labo.

RÉTARD ANGEL

On “Rétard Angel”, fakemink turns away from overt luxury references and instead focuses on scent as something more bodily. Freed from brand name-checks, he sings: “Miss the scent of your sweat / Miss laying skin to skin.” 

This shift in language surrounding scent feels like a reflection of fakemink’s own reckoning with what matters as he rises to fame. This move away from excess and materialism is emphasised further on lyrics like “Burn incense of guilt in a room that forgives”.