Navy Blue - Higher Self

Navy Blue

Navy Blue might have started out as a narrow outlet, a way for the then-art student, who had already enjoyed a measure of cult fame as a skateboarder, to work through his ideas about spare, confessional hip-hop. But as that outlet has come to yield some of the most accomplished rap music of its era, it has come to seem like the totality of Sage Elsesser. With Ways of Knowing, his new album for Def Jam, the artist aims to round that persona into something fuller and richer.

Elsesser was raised in Los Angeles in a house full of music. His mother, a Los Angeles native, was a singer and dancer, and his father was a Chilean multi-instrumentalist. Eventually, a string of Navy Blue EPs carved something of a niche online, and a feature on Earl Sweatshirt’s acclaimed Some Rap Songs brought Elsesser to a much wider audience. Since then he has been lauded for his ability to make daring music that is at once starkly revealing and shrouded in mystery. Beginning with his proper debut album, Àdá Irin, and continuing through Song of Sage: Post Panic! (both releases 2020), Navy’s Reprise (2021), and a trio of 2022 drops, Elsesser has deepened his self-analysis, teasing out the way depression, trauma, and other issues have weighed on him. With Ways of Knowing, he imagines relistening a decade in the future. The title is a comment on Elsesser’s willingness to admit what he doesn’t know, and his desire to wield his insecurities like a scythe that cuts through the thicket of life around him.

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