Since Sage Elsesser’s Def Jam departure following 2023’s introspective Ways of Knowing, his Navy Blue albums have only gotten more autobiographical. First came Memoirs in Armour, a gripping look inside the mind of one of rap’s most ruminative over instrumentals by some of the underground’s finest. This continues on The Sword & The Soaring, a series of songs that addresses the past and present with a directness rarely encountered in this or any genre. A sense of loss looms over the somber Child Actor beat for “Sunlight of the Spirit,” while a countervailing brightness surfaces later on the self-produced “Sharing Life.” Religious imagery and professions of faith help to finely frame these profoundly personal recordings, as he finds kinship with Earl Sweatshirt on “24 Gospel” and professes declarations of salvation on “Guardadas.” Wrath and love tussle throughout this musical missive on grief and trauma, yet by the end of fantasy-indebted “The Phoenix” it appears his healing light has won out over the suffocating darkness.