ZOOMERCORE
Mavi - Let the Sun Talk
Don't write him off.
First, to address the elephant in the room...MAVI does sound like Earl Sweatshirt and MIKE. He wears these influences brazenly on his sleeve, even getting a track produced by Thebe. However, MAVI paves his own way through this album.
A 19 year-old neuroscience major at Howard University, MAVI manages to write some gorgeous, introspective, "conscious" bars on Let the Sun Talk. I use the label "conscious rap" with quotations because I wish to separate him from preachy, pandering lyrics that the genre often falls prey to. No, his lines on this album speak on a huge breadth of topics: family, race, depression, money, politics, metaphysics, and heartbreak, without ever sounding too on-the-nose, obvious, or preachy.
His sound is a new take on the experimental/conscious hip-hop scene by swapping sometimes overly abstract flows a-la MIKE or Earl for some catchier sounds while delivering some of the most dense, heartfelt, and complex lyrics that I have heard in a while. I am excited to see what MAVI does next.