Let the Sun Talk

Like MF DOOM and André 3000 before him, Charlotte, North Carolina’s MAVI—a bio/psych student at Howard University—is a rapper as attuned to the mystical realms of the inner world as the realities of the outer one. Brief, lyrical, propelled by abstract takes on ’90s boom-bap, Let the Sun Talk is the kind of rap album you can take at multiple cognitive speeds, marinating in loops, catching snatches of MAVI’s casually philosophical ruminations, breezy on the surface and dense down deep (“Moonfire,” “Self Love”). “Spinning outwards, lost, so she saying, ‘What kinds of songs you make?’” he raps on the Earl Sweatshirt-produced standout “Sense.” “I make the kind you gotta read, baby/I leave the silence you can see, baby/I weave the darkness you can hear, baby/I leave my carcass in the field, baby/I parse my garden on the real, daily.” What’s more? “And you can sense it.” How’s that for a mission statement?