Spectreview: Navy Blue – Àdá Irin

-LIGHT CORAL-

For a guide to the review color rating system, click here.

“I ascend from the root
I made amends, I carved the proof
I hate the stench from the hatred in the room”

If you were somebody who’s pored over “Futura Free” from Frank Ocean’s Blonde, savoring that track’s stark humanism and purposeful obfuscations, then you’re already familiar with the voice of Sage Elsesser, a Brooklyn-based skateboarder who also makes music under Navy Blue. Though he’s been releasing lo-fi rap for a few years now, it’s only now he’s out with a decisive debut album that’s less aligned with any R&B adventurousness than the jazzy lo-fi gracing the likes of Mavi and MIKE, plus the boundary-scrambling productions of Earl Sweatshirt (to whose recent albums Elsesser’s already contributed a few verses). Simply put, it’s a hell of a debut, less scatterbrained than your typical lo-fi record while still bearing that genre’s dense, melancholic splendor (think Some Rap Songs but clearer-eyed and plunged in water), with energizing elements of jazz and soul woven in for flavor. Throughout Àdá Irin, Elsesser raps what seems like an internal monologue, eschewing metaphor in favor of straightforward, urgent messaging. Much of that messaging is lamentation; some of that plainspoken dejectedness, like on on the brilliant “Simultaneous Bleeding,” is aimed at social issues and despicable politics, but it’s the fallout from his grandfather’s passing (covered in detail on the free-flowing “Hari Kari”) that finds the rapper most preoccupied. Blessedly the mood doesn’t stay as downcast as the gorgeous production, instead rising slowly upward as the record comes to its conclusion; from a humble reassurance wrapped in a glorious verse from cult Brooklyn MC Ka (“In Good Hands”) to the soft jazz and softer words of “Ode2MyLove” all the way to the grace of gratefulness in “To Give Praise!”, Àdá Irin closes with unbelievable warmth, a gift from a gifted mind with a promising future.

Recommended for layering windbreakers.