Sometimes a glimpse of your reflection in a mirror can be as disorienting as a dolly zoom, a terrifying flash of presence that pulls you into a dark corner of yourself. Mavi experiences several such moments of revelation Shadowboxhis screaming, heart-pounding third album. His every glance sends him spinning off his axis, frantically running until he can grab a piece of land. “I'm So Tired” begins with one of those realizations: “Today my grandma turns 80/And I'm on three Percocets, I haven't eaten yet.” Mavi holds his gaze as if it were Persephone beckoning seductively from the bottom of the abyss. Synthic bass and splattered cymbals wash over him like a collapsing ceiling, the reverberation threatening to swallow his pleas for release.
Mavi's music can be almost voyeuristic, as if we are watching his brain activity behind a two-way mirror. The Charlotte emcee shuffles through existential circles, pondering lofty concepts like the conflict between fate and free will, or whether identity is innate or constructed. This is painful work. he was only 21 when he was released End of the Earthand he had already come to the conclusion that existence is suffering—either you roll over or you keep going. Despite the bright grooves of the golden hour, 2022 Laughing so hard hurts she was full of self-doubt, Mavi's joints ached from trying to keep her balance.
On shadow box, the darkness that licked at the edges of his earlier work has almost overtaken him. As Laughing so hard hurts propelled him to a new level of stardom, Mavi faced a spell of personal problems. the substances he hoped would ease his mind dulled his creative drive and exacerbated his depression. When she emerged, she began writing unflinchingly about how debilitating it is to untangle a mental health crisis. References to drugs and drink abound. sadness and heartbreak permeate every verse. He remains troubled by many of the same perennial philosophical questions, but is less certain that there are answers to be found.
Gratefully, Shadowbox it never buckles under the weight of its clouded subjects. It is as inventive as any Mavi work, almost virtuosic in execution. Despite the narcotic cloud surrounding the album's creation, Mavi's writing is more impressive than ever: rich with imagery and metaphor and filled with spiraling internal rhymes, yet still piercing and direct. The most unrelenting lines pack a punch, like when he says, “I was taking pills while mom made dinner” on “Tether,” or as he admits, on “Grindstone,” “I'm saying I quit, there's been too much tomorrow.” A water motif appears throughout the first half of the record, sometimes offering salvation through baptism or cleansing, other times promising to completely envelop Mavi.
