Mavi – “Baking Soda”

We caught up with the young Charlotte rapper Mavi last year upon the release of his THE END OF THE EARTH EP. He’s got a new album called Laughing So Hard It Hurts coming next month, and it keeps up his streak of warm, meditative, analog hip-hop highlights. You can practically see the dust flying off the grooves on producers Monte Booker and Amarah’s central soul sample, probably sent flying by the hard-smacked sputtering-machinery drums. In a laid-back melodic cadence, Mavi builds to a climax that sounds like shrugging off low-key devastation: “She say you either on drugs or need to be, which is better?/ She was already gone ‘fore I could see she ain’t get the letter.” Watch the Brick-directed music video below.