Photo by Vivian Khananounsay

“I’m a robot for the media / Show bones off from the preening / I been roped off / When you see me now / Choked off from the scenery,” MAVI laments on “drunk prayer”, the latest single off his new album, shadowbox. The Charlotte rapper flourishes through an understated kind of rap filled with introverted, top-of-mind details on the life happening inside and around him. All of that has far worked in his favor in welcoming us into his in a time where the hip-hop above and undergrounds don’t really seem to have a concrete path laid out in front of them at the moment. He’s in his own lane. Yet, even then, it’s easy to lose your way, and MAVI admits to that much since his 2022 breakthrough Laughing so Hard it Hurts turned him from a neuroscience major with a gift of rhyme into a known name with universal critical acclaim behind it. There’s indeed a darkness cast over these bars where even his voice sounds weighted down by the heaviness of where he’s at, leaning on smoke and the bottle, until he’s repentant. “Oh my god, my lord and savior / I know that I’m blessed / I am touched / Put all of this pain in this cup / I swear I’m done feeling.” Soul clouds swirling through the emo cathedral ceiling in its elegiac production by Angelo LeRoi, he can see the other side, but just needs something to lift him to it.

Directed by: MAVI & Jesse Fox Hallen

MAVI’s shadowbox will be released August 9th.