Mavi is an intriguing proposition: a budding neuroscientist wise beyond his years, who also happens to be one of hip hop’s brightest hopes. Whether he’s exploring mental health, liberation or #MeToo, the Charlotte native’s music is driven by a desire to seek out answers – regardless of how uncomfortable the truth might be.
Text: Thomas Hobbs – Photography: Nate Palmer
Few artists will take you to the depths of their mind with more clarity than Mavi. The 20-year-old rapper is, by his own admission, naturally inquisitive. So as far as he’s concerned, nothing is off limits. His swirling stream-of-consciousness flow channels the likes of Ralph Ellison, Virginia Woolf and Earl Sweatshirt, with probing lyrics designed to teach young black people how to insulate themselves with self-love – so that the systemic hate they experience in America doesn’t feel insurmountable.
“I fucking love asking questions,” he says, speaking over the phone while wandering through LA in pursuit of chicken curry.
“I am an interrogator. I don’t think you can be a black man in this society and not be inquisitive, because this shit really doesn’t make much sense. I want to look for answers and equip my people with knowledge so that they can feel stronger.”
The Charlotte native is currently a biology major and psychology minor at Howard University, D.C., with dreams of becoming a neuroscientist. This wisdom extends into his music too: his debut album, Let The Sun Talk, felt like a beacon of light upon its release towards the end of last year, coming at a time when a dangerous nihilism had crept back into hip hop culture.
There isn’t a month that goes by without the news of a young rapper dying tragically. This makes hearing Mavi rap, ‘I got some crazy-ass results from showing kindness’ feel quietly revolutionary. On soulful highlight ‘Sense’ (produced by Earl, who has become a mentor, collaborator and source of “some fire-ass books”), he boasts that his raps are “the kind you gotta read, baby,” acutely aware that his inward-looking lyrics are just as powerful on paper as they are on beat. → For Mavi, seeing rappers’ poetic merits dismissed because of the box that culture places them in is tiring. He wants to permanently alter the cliché that generation-defining poets – something he’s more than capable of becoming – must also be tortured souls.
“This whole idea that a poet should be fatalistic and drunk in order to achieve transcendence in their work is all lies!” he says, growing animated.
