The Pilot, MAVI chooses stardom over artistry”>
Mase Ralph
Last summer, MAVI told The FADER the “best” rapper doesn’t exist. “Black people’s lives are judged on how impressive you are, on some basketball card shit, slave chattel worker shit,” he said, adding that nobody asks who’s the “best” painter, or the “best” poet. It was a thoughtful consideration of how we value and critique hip-hop as a commodity rather than an art form, though that’s no surprise coming from MAVI. Since his 2019 debut, the North Carolina rapper has been exploring Black liberation and his own furtive psyche on wax with honed clarity.
So it’s a little disheartening that these heady, urgent concerns have been shunted to the side on his first major label release, The Pilot. “Greatest rapper in Charlotte history, on my motherfuckin’ mama / I’ll bet my advance on it, pussy,” MAVI smirks near the end of “G-ANNIS FREESTYLE.” New fans and casual listeners are liable to agree. But across the album, MAVI deliberately withdraws from the confessional style that previously shaped his discography and culminated in 2024’s transcendent shadowbox. Instead, the bulk of his latest is preoccupied with designer brands (some for MAVI, some for various paramours) and bag chasing (he’d really like a million dollars). Despite how polished and poised his latest effort indeed is — the beats are warm and sumptuous, his flows are fluid and agile — this thematic retreat leaves a void that, however small, is sorely felt.
To be fair, hedonistic impulses have always woven through MAVI’s music; He’s never been one to thumb his nose at the street rappers and contemporary sound kits that define mainstream hip-hop. After all, his 2019 album Let The Sun Talk began by acknowledging that, “To be pro-Black / Means to relentlessly pursue / Money, land, guns and useful knowledge.” But it certainly is odd to hear MAVI eagerly rap about robbing, keeping the heat, popping Oxys, “sniping” women whose names he doesn’t know.
We’re far off from the strained escapism of “i’m so tired,” let alone the womanist bent of “selflove.” I wouldn’t go so far as labeling him a sellout, but where the tension between the carnal and political previously created complex valleys and peaks in his work, The Pilot is underwhelmingly flat. To his credit, MAVI at least stops short of calling his pursuits hoes, bitches, or fineshyt, though that might have more to do with image maintenance; a line like, “They can’t even tell that I rap, how I dress,” veers bewilderingly close to the sort of respectability politics MAVI previously thumbed his nose at.
Like his threats of gun violence or the flashes of boilerplate misogyny, this regressive attitude is frustrating not because MAVI knows better (though he does), but because it undercuts the nuanced persona he’s striving to portray. Even “31 Days,” ostensibly about his newfound sobriety, kicks off with MAVI pulling his Audi into the Target parking lot, Cartier on the wrist and Glock in his pocket.
Listening to his 2025 summertime single “Jammer’s Anonymous” with Niontay, it was easy enough to envision MAVI entering something akin to his Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers arc, rejecting the pedestal he’s been placed on in favor of messier humanity. Instead, The Pilot feels more like his GNX, a low-stakes project for a rapper to let loose and flex a little.
Where the tension between the carnal and political previously created complex valleys and peaks in his work, The Pilot is underwhelmingly flat.
What the album lacks in depth, it also refuses to make up for with stylistic complexity. The most troubling aspect of The Pilot is MAVI’s flow, as evidenced by “Landgrab” with Earl Sweatshirt. In 2019, Earl’s cosign helped push MAVI to a wider audience near the very beginning of his career, one circuitous lyricist passing the torch to a potential heir apparent. But MAVI’s flow, once coiled and languid, twisting in on itself in a stream of consciousness, has now become so clean as to feel indistinct. (Earl too, has been relaxing as a lyricist and rapping about sobriety this year, but the more legible style seems in service of communicating more directly with the audience.)
Paired with the thinner thematics, The Pilot sands off MAVI’s idiosyncrasies in favor of easy consumption. These songs will probably be easier for a crowd to sing back at him than “Chinese Finger Trap” or “the sky is quiet,” and likely make easier entry points for newcomers than the thicket of verses on preceding albums. But the qualities that made MAVI more than a cool artist — the unvarnished candor, his conscientious commitment to Black empowerment, the wise-beyond-his-years maturity and razor-sharp wit that set him apart as a great rapper — are now in short supply.
The Pilot opens with the assertion, “I’m the best dressed n***a on my therapist couch,” but the rest of “Heavy Hand” offers minimal detail on what brought him there or what he’s taking away from his sessions. Before, MAVI might have talked you through those emotions. Right now, he’s got that shit on, and he’d rather be seen than heard.
