\n\t\trooklyn restaurant Underhill Cafe is scarcely occupied on a rainy Thursday afternoon. The rustic cafe\u2019s solitary television is airing basketball from the Eurobasket league, and the lone waiter periodically bounces between watching the game and serving the restaurant\u2019s three patrons. I sit alone at a four-person table until redveil<\/a> arrives unassumingly, hopping out of an Uber.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tHe\u2019s in New York City for a couple more days, conducting listening sessions for his upcoming Sankofa album, dropping Dec. 4. He\u2019s also handling other business, including a stop by the Little Simz<\/a> show later that evening. It\u2019s clear that he\u2019s getting everything arranged for what might be his biggest year yet as an artist. \u201cI feel like it\u2019s going to be a crazy 2026,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a little nerve-racking being quiet about the stuff I\u2019m working on and hoping that people are going to be fully receptive once everything is done and out.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe PG County-born, LA-based rapper-producer was born to a Canadian-Jamaican mother and a father from New Orleans by way of the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts. He split time between both of their homes in PG, being influenced by their disparate music tastes, time in church (which taught him poignancy and how to layer sounds) as well as his growing love for hip-hop through artists like J. Cole, Tyler, the Creator,<\/a> and Logic, who were his first inspirations when he dropped his first project, 2019\u2019s Bittersweet Cry at 15.<\/p>\n \n\tIt was 2020\u2019s niagara and 2022\u2019s Learn 2 Swim that rapidly established his earnestness, lyrical prowess, and knack for immersive production on songs like \u201cpg baby,\u201d \u201cSoulfood,\u201d and \u201cWeight.\u201d His catalog got the attention of figures like Brooklyn-based rapper MIKE,<\/a> comedian, rapper and DJ Zach Fox, and Tyler, the Creator, who shared all his music. His music isn\u2019t overly political, but he showed his empathy in a viral 2023 moment at Tyler\u2019s Camp Flog Gnaw<\/a>, memorializing children killed by the IDF while calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cNobody on this fuckin\u2019 list made it to the age of four,\u201d he said onstage. \u201cIt\u2019s not complicated, don\u2019t let nobody tell you that shit.\u201d He tells me that he can\u2019t even fathom how long the list would be in 2025. When I ask if he told Tyler about his plans before the set, he shakes his head no, noting that he hadn\u2019t yet met the artist. \u201cThat\u2019s something that if I had the opportunity, [I] would\u2019ve loved to share just in case it inspired anything on his end,\u201d he says, noting \u201cat the same time, it\u2019s not something you ask for permission to do.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\tHe was resolute about his message and intentional about how he conveyed it; that same combination of traits comprised Sankofa, which has had three singles so far: \u201cbrown sugar\u201d (with Smino), \u201cmini me,\u201d and \u201clone star.\u201d He explains that the word Sankofa, originated from Ghana\u2019s Akan tribe, means \u201cit\u2019s not taboo to go back for what you\u2019ve forgotten,\u201d and he\u2019s always appreciated how descendants of American slavery amplify the symbol. He first started working on a new album in November of 2023. He workshopped numerous album titles, but the Sankofa theme resonated the most. For him, the 12-track project is a result of \u201chonoring my inner child as a producer on this album more so than anything else I\u2019ve ever made.\u201d He\u2019s said that his previous albums are all an interconnected narrative of his life and times. Sankofa continues the sonic narrative, though, he says, \u201cit\u2019s not from exactly where the last one left off. There\u2019s a little bit of space in between that you can feel.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI think throughout the album, [I am] really contextualizing a lot of the feelings that I\u2019ve spoken on in previous projects around anxiety, around depression, just really opening up and examining everything without hesitation,\u201d he says. And he did so with a deeper creative motivation. He admits that he \u201chit a ceiling\u201d in PG County, and decided to move to LA in January of 2024, a city that he says \u201cforced me to execute as big as possible, because that\u2019s a city where everybody is executing big.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n \n\tAt 18, living alone across the country, he faced more solitude than ever before. But the isolation brought him closer to his craft: \u201cSomething I learned when I moved there was the importance of being able to get into the zone and be by myself sometimes, and have the space to think through everything without any subconscious influence.\u201d He spent time reading articles and watching videos on songwriting, realizing that he wanted his lyricism to give listeners a place to \u201cescape to.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tEven he was a bit surprised by his growth; he says the original version of \u201cbrown sugar\u201d felt like \u201clightning in a bottle,\u201d with lyrics so flirty and catchy that it made him ponder if he could emulate the process over the course of an album. \u201cI was like, \u2018This can\u2019t go on this album,\u2019\u201d he recalls. The version with Smino, the album\u2019s lead single, was recorded \u201cmonths later.\u201d He eventually came to appreciate the gentle track not as Sankofa\u2019s thematic anchor, but as a release from an album with significant tension.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tHis vivid lyricism and existential anxiety coalesce on \u201cpray for me,\u201d a song with lyrics he says \u201cflowed through\u201d him while writing. The track\u2019s dreamy instrumentation evokes a Hollywood Hills sunset, but the city is no oasis as he feels the fame monster looming. On the second verse he takes the listener with him to a lonely pocket of Los Angeles, pondering his premature demise while belting, \u201cducking and dodging psychosis got my heartbeat tired\u201d with the urgency of a man on the brink.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\tOn \u201csave,\u201d he ponders fleeting solace and raps, \u201cDon\u2019t ask me shit about me \/ I don\u2019t know him from a can of paint.\u201d And on \u201cbuzzer beater\/black christmas,\u201d a two-part song, he offers three snapshots of consequential life moments in three verses, then, on \u201cblack christmas,\u201d raps a veritable epilogue (with a beat switch). \u201cBlack christmas\u201d was added once he realized \u201cbuzzer beater\u201d wasn\u2019t finished \u2014 he says these days, some songs take as long as eight months to perfect lyrically.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe halves of the track emit different sonic energy, but both feel full, with live instrumentation from a slew of fellow LA-based \u201cmusic nerds\u201d who helped him craft Sankofa: pianist and string instrumentalist Johnny May, bassist Jermaine Paul, guitarist Keelan Walters, flutist Amber Navran, drummer Myles Martin, and keyboardist Brian Hargrove. Julian Knowles also plays trumpet on Sankofa. Redveil made it a point to re-explore the first chapter of his music career, focusing more on composition than the samples that have defined his recent work. The album\u2019s heavy themes and warm production is often juxtaposed, exemplifying the classic artistic quandary: feeling everything, even the doldrums, but appreciating the beauty of being alive to experience it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tSankofa could very well vault redveil into wider visibility. He says he currently feels like he\u2019s at the \u201cperfect level\u201d of celebrity, where he gets noticed in public but not overwhelmingly so. But that soon could change. I learn that he and his colleagues took the MTA train from Manhattan into Brooklyn; I ask him how he\u2019s going to feel if he becomes too much of a star for mundane train rides.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cDude, I\u2019ll probably hate the fuck out of it,\u201d he admits. \u201cBut at the same time, I\u2019ll be able to touch so many lives and help so many people in my own life that it\u2019ll be fine.\u201d\u00a0 When I begin to ask him how he weighs his success with the overall glum state of the world, he cuts me off, drops his food and gestures with his hands while venting about how often he reflects on his privilege. \u201cJust witnessing friends and sometimes younger family \u2014 and helping [them] to the capacity that I can \u2014 I have that thought so much that if I had to do something other than music, I might be fucked just because it\u2019s so bleak,\u201d he says. That\u2019s what encourages him to be willing to speak up like he did at Flog Gnaw, amplifying the causes \u201cwe\u2019re all feeling\u201d as Americans.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\tIn a world full of rappers who love to call their listeners broke, redveil\u2019s self-awareness is refreshing. Equally unique is his perspective on hip-hop\u2019s commercial viability. The day before our conversation, Billboard revealed that there wasn\u2019t a rap song on the Top 40 for the first time in 35 years; social media discourse fixated on hip-hop being dead and the reasons why. Redveil feels the complete opposite: \u201cHip-hop at its core, and all the values that created it are anti-establishment, right? So people talking about hip hop [being] dead because it\u2019s not charting is an oxymoron.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI don\u2019t see it as a net negative because one, there\u2019s still enough for people to eat, even if they\u2019re not on the top 40,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd also it\u2019s good [to] take some pressure off people that really want to make music in this art form from doing these games and dances to try to metrically compete more than anything else. It\u2019s fucking up the music.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n \n\tMetrics didn\u2019t come up once in our conversation. He tells me that he\u2019s looking forward to his upcoming tour, noting that the chance to \u201cscream and rap\u201d is what he enjoys most as a musician. The tour kicks off February 11 at Houston\u2019s House of Blues.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tFor redveil, the ultimate goal is being an artist who \u201cproves that they have good ideas. When that happens, you\u2019re able to be trusted by the audience to take them somewhere else.\u201d The journey on Sankofa just may be the catalyst of that actuality.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"B rooklyn restaurant Underhill Cafe is scarcely occupied on a rainy Thursday afternoon. The rustic cafe\u2019s solitary television…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93536,93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-168737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-artist-you-need-to-know","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-rollingstone-2022\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
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