“I’ve probably been home 28 days in the last six months,” Mavi tells me on Zoom. He’s walking through what looks like the parking lot of a store while talking to me on Zoom from somewhere in between Houston and Dallas. He’s opening on a few dates for Earl’s 3L World Tour, just weeks after spending two months opening up for Freddie Gibbs and The Alchemist during the North American leg of their Alfredo 2 tour.
And just two days before, he was in L.A. at a release event for his mixtape The Pilot, which was released this week. The party’s date, Nov. 17, just so happened to mark a year of sobriety for him. He tells me the timing wasn’t intentional, but meaningful. He never felt like celebrating his prior albums, but the event felt like a commemoration of what he says has been a “great” 2025, crafting The Pilot while touring, dropping singles like “Landgrab” with Earl and “Potluck” with Smino, and ideating his upcoming First In Flight album.
“God responds to sacrifice, across all spiritual traditions of earth,” he says. “Prostration and sacrifice are a part of it. There’s a degree of smallness you got to access in order to get to the bigness.” For Mavi, that expansion takes shape in a healthier, more fulfilling personal life, and an environment that inspired a freer creative approach on The Pilot. He’s collaborating with other rappers (the aforementioned two as well as MIKE on “Triple Nickel” and Kenny Mason on “Typewriter”), which he had never done before on his own projects. Tracks like “Silent Film” and “G-ANNIS FREESTYLE” especially feel like him trying his always pliant cadences off on sonics that defy expectations set by his prior catalog.
Last year, he talked to me about a desire to be considered one of the best rappers. This year, it feels like his mindset has shifted: “Discovering my strength is moreso like, yes, Mavi’s a good rapper. Thanks. Appreciate it. Cool. But it’s like, how do I advance? How do I challenge myself to mean more to my city and to the black community in this time of delicacy and fucking vulnerability and uncertainty? How do I continue to advance my vision for the arts?”
That focus bleeds through all of his creative choices, including something as simple as getting his nails and hair done during his July Lyrical Lemonade Lunch Break Freestyle. “I think the whole self-destructive rapper thing is A, pathetic [and] B, dangerous for the kids to perpetuate as a stereotype. So I’m on some shit, like ‘Nigga I fuck with myself, and I want to take care of myself and love myself in public.’ That’s a powerful image for Black men, especially.”
Similarly powerful is The Pilot’s artwork, depicting Mavi in what he calls a “fitted wingsuit,” a Japanese fashion editorial-inspired image that symbolizes multiple truths: “Mavi’s better. He’s flying, he’s more famous, he’s getting more money.” “The Pilot” motif also refers to Mavi feeling more in control of his life and decisions, and will thematically extend into First In Flight, which he says he’s 85% done with. “As soon as it’s done, I won’t make anybody wait at all,” he says.
He’s also about 15% through a project with friend and rapper-producer Ovrkast, who’s his show DJ. Their closeness is apparent through Mavi’s humorous Zoom introduction: “Say what up to Andre Gee, pussy ass nigga.” Beyond the jest, Mavi says, “I think we’re always going to be on each other’s tours. He’s been on every single tour I’ve been on in some capacity.” With The Pilot out now, and two more projects coming soon, they may be back on the road pretty soon.
Mavi talked to us about The Pilot, his new outlook on life, and the importance of genuine community.
How was the release party?
It was sick, man. I never threw a party before, so I didn’t know if people was going to come. They came and I was happy. I felt really good about the response to the music. I think there are things that I did on this EP sonically that I’ve never done before, and I’m coming from a really well-understood and structurally concrete sound. So it got to the point where it’s like, are they going to fuck with me doing different things, like more uptempo things or playing with different sounds? And they responded the most to the stuff when I was stepping outside of what was well understood, and I thought that was super sweet. So yeah, I would say a resounding success, the merch was fire, everything was sick..
So you’d never done a prior release event?
No, I came out during the pandemic and then [dropped] Laughing so Hard, It Hurts. My albums that I’ve released, this wasn’t time to party. I think I have something to celebrate now. I think I have a lot to celebrate personally and professionally, and I feel like I have to take the opportunity to celebrate more. I think my mom was telling me, “If you don’t take the time and acknowledge when you’re having a good day, when you have a bad day, you got to look back and think you only have bad days.” I had to turn up one time and I’m glad that people were there to celebrate me. A bunch of my artist homies pulled up: MIKE, Sideshow, Cousteau, Jordan, Saba, Redveil. It just happened to coincide with my one year sober. That wasn’t on purpose or anything. I didn’t even realize that until a few days before and I was like, “Damn, that’s so sick.” So it felt good to be reinforced at work at the same time as I crossed the boundary or crossed over a threshold.
On a two-part level, personally and professionally, how has the past year been for you?
Man, the year has been great. I moved downtown to this shiny new apartment. Well, first, after I released my album last year, I basically toured pretty immediately. I think I did more shows of Shadowbox than what I should have. That music is really…it’s like a black hole. It’s small but super dense and super cold. You suck all the heat and love out of the air or surrounding space.
So I think traveling the literal earth and doing the most dates I’ve ever done of that music, it had a dual effect. One was my self-perception became super shaky and negative. It already was [because] of what was going on in my life before I released it. And two, I got really tired of the content of the music actually being my state of affairs. So my decision to quit drinking was not on a rock bottom day. I had a lot of rock bottom days, but one day I was in Dublin, I was like, “I think I’m going quit drinking.” And then we went to Amsterdam and had a few drinks with my homie at this super freaky sex pub, The Banana Bar. But it was different. And because the sex show at The Banana Bar was super disgusting as well, I think it kind of did a Pavlov thing with me, and that was my last time drinking. And so as I kept performing this music, I’m like, “Damn, I’m sick of this.” And then just my travels was like, “Yeah, I don’t want this to be my life, this shit I’m talking about in this song.”
After I quit drinking, I made a promise to God and about what I was going to be going to do, and a lot of dominoes just started falling through me. I am projecting into the void. Of course all humans are, but in my life experience thus far, God responds to sacrifice, across all spiritual traditions of earth. Prostration and sacrifice is a part of it. There’s a degree of smallness you got to access in order to get to the bigness. So I got really small and shit started falling in a really cool direction for me. I got a really fast car and a shiny new apartment above the Spectrum Arena, and I just stayed on my shit. I put on 10 pounds of muscle, just got hella sexy, bro. Honestly, my swag is up. Shit’s just got sweet a little bit for me. I think sustaining that over this year has been new challenges for sure. I got into therapy, got into piano lessons, just trying to keep pouring into myself so that I never feel emptied out, and a year of that landed on the same day as my mixtape coming out. So it ended up being hella sweet.
How do you think sobriety has affected your music?
I don’t know, bro. Only reason I say I don’t know is because I also hit the 26-year-old prefrontal cortex galaxy brain thing at the same time. So I don’t know which is which, but writing songs is really, really easy now. But writing different kinds of songs, I think my songwriting is very concrete and experiential and I think it was a trend over my music from Let the Sun Talk to now where my abstraction power has transferred into super concrete and referential shit. My writing is a mirror. The mirror used to be a funhouse mirror and now it’s crystal [clear], which is different, not better or worse. But I’m the best I’ve ever been at this different. But yeah, I’m working on a bunch of shit now and I’ve been having fun in the studio for the first time, probably since I was a teenager, and the fun has been like maybe I want to be a different guy in the studio today.
Me and Ovrkast are working on our thing, and the other night I was like, “I want to be 19-year-old piece of shit Mavi today.” And I just made the whole song from that. But sometimes, especially when I feel a little stagnant creatively, I give myself a challenge. So I got a song with Jordan where I was like, I just want to make a song about having sex with somebody, and you don’t know them, but you wake up next to ’em one morning and you’re like, “Oh shit, you’re the love of my life,” which is something I never experienced at all. I just made that shit up out of whole cloth, but it was like a superpower song. I think having fun with it instead of through a substance, placing myself in my mind in a place separate from my body, just using my imagination has been cool. I love my job, dude. So yeah, I’m going to find a way to be really happy with it. However, I appear at work just because I would die to do this work.
That’s dope because I feel like musicians, rappers in particular, have the stigma that fans take everything literal. So if you were to potentially drop a song about having sex with somebody and falling in love with them, people would be like, “Oh, who is this person?” They wouldn’t give you the creative license.
I think it is really good in terms of a writing exercise. Really good rap is mostly true, but I, there’s power and make-believe on some Ishmael Reed, Sun Ra shit. I think when we close our eyes and we’re solo on our saxophone and we’re improvising, I think we’re in the make-believe place.
Kind of Blue by Miles Davis is the most commercially successful jazz record of all time, and it’s extremely coherent. Can’t say that he’s as free as on it because written and intended to be a certain thing, and it succeeds in that, but there’s a difference between that which is very on purpose, methodical, true, and something that is extra true or para-true. I fuck with rappers who deal in fantasy. I fuck with Ka a lot for that reason. Doom a lot for that reason. And if for no other reason than it is a way to honor your artistic tradition by stretching it to its limits. It’s fun, and when I come back to myself, [it] makes me have better turns of phrase or better familiarity with the core of where to take shots from that makes my Mavi music about Mavi even better.
What do you think inspired your push for more collaboration this year?
I think just a bunch of shit. One is, I really think as you get older, you make friends at different things. I think you probably have made more friends around writing as you continue that work. I think your relationships are built a lot around proximity and my proximity have changed since I’ve gotten older. I was just talking to somebody like, I’ve been friends with Earl Sweatshirt since I was 18 years old. I was an actual child. My rapper friends actually know me from when I was a kid. So I think it is a mix of a few things where it’s like these are my homies and I’ve done the whole, we are homies so much that we don’t have to make songs thing.
And that is true, but eventually you have five, six songs with each of these people in the tuck. Me and Smino[’s “Potluck”] is probably our fourth song. think I’ve begun to make my hardest shit with a lot of the homies that I’ve been working with for years recently. And then also, I found that I’m really good at features. I’m damn near better at features than I am by myself.
You ever went bowling and somebody who can’t bowl good put[s] the bumpers up? Somebody else rapping on a song with you was having bumpers. You have something to write up against. I think sometimes a boundary or a limitation can inspire greater creativity. So somebody else’s stylistic restriction or subject matter strength makes me lean into a different part of my writing that I wouldn’t by myself, and then I make really interesting shit. That’s why I think it makes the music better. I think my whole shit these days is, “How can the music be better?”
With the bumper analogy, do you view that dynamic as something different than the way rappers typically talk about collaboration as competition, wanting to have the best verse on the song?
Well, no. I think generally, bro, not to pop it, I be having the best verse. My discography is public information. [Laughs] Of course, I always want to write better than the person I’m on the song. But I think that’s when I appear on somebody else’s song. When I think about my song, I’m more concerned about giving the best song and presenting the person who I’m featuring along these strengths, maximizing their strengths. I think when I’m featured on other people’s songs, I want to murder them and take on their fans every time. And I do. I really do, bro.
What tone do you feel like The Pilot sets for your career? What kind of demarcation point is this for you?
Discovering my strength. I think, man, I’ve had a weird relationship with desire and validation in my life. I was talking to somebody, and they were like, “So now how do you feel about when people want you or admire you or emulate themselves after you?” It makes sense. I think I’ve invested years of my life and an irrelevant but significant amount of money into being this stage of progression that I’m at right now. I am one of them ones because I work hard and because I care, and because I study and I intern, I wait, I invest.
The conversation I was having with this lady, we was talking about women and she was like, “When girls want to talk to you, is that, do you still get all shaken up how you used to?” I’m like, “No, I wear a thousand dollars’ worth of cologne.” Of course I smell good. That’s not really what I’m going for anymore. Discovering my strength is moreso like, yes, Mavi’s a good rapper. Thanks. Appreciate it. Cool. But it’s like, how do I advance? How do I challenge myself to mean more to my city and to the black community in this time of delicacy and fucking vulnerability and uncertainty? How do I continue to advance my vision for the arts? How do I make coherent my tastes? How do I gather people with similar tastes and empower them? Those are the new challenges for me.
I know I’m really strong at my job and that if I continue to invest in being, if I keep going to the gym every day, I’m going to be strong. I got a good base and I’m already strong now. It’s like, okay, now that we are stronger in our strengths, let’s get stronger at our weaknesses too, or our blind spots. So I think that’s what it is. It’s me reflecting and updating everybody who’s last time hearing me [was when] I was drunk in concave. I’m okay now. I’m actually the best now and I’m figuring it out.
You’ve said that you felt like this project is less “lyrically disciplined” than Shadowbox. Do you feel like that’s reflected in less adherence to certain themes?
Not really. I think the less adherence to certain themes is based on me being more directly autobiographical. The stuff I say about my life on The Pilot are absolutely true and current on that day that I said ‘em. And I think life doesn’t adhere to theme. So when I’m being directly autobiographical, it’s kind of scatterbrained, but then the scatterbrain is always in service to the current truth and some reflection on this current state of affairs. The beginning of “31 days,” that whole first verse is [truly] what it was that day and what I was thinking about on that day. But it ended up being a roundabout statement on the current state of hip hop media or succeeding despite finding success in a fucking disgusting ass time on earth right now. Or repairing my friendships in the wake of me finding sobriety. So I ended up discussing a lot of shit, even though it’s only talking about me directly saying what I’m feeling or thinking, right then.
So was that written on, I’m assuming, your 31st day of sobriety?
Hell yeah, man. All this music and my album have been made this year. The last song on this motherfucker, I made in September.
So was “Silent Film” from the dance project you told me about wanting to make?
Oh yes, yes, yes. That was the song from there, yes. I made three more, but yeah, that’s the oldest one. I think that one probably was last year.
What was the inspiration for the mixtape artwork?
It’s petty as hell. I got the Pleats Please, Taschen Issey Miyake coffee table book, and I really love Issey Miyake a lot. One thing I fuck with about Japan and a lot of Japanese art is it’s got a lot of confluence and middle venn diagram with African design languages, and themes. Even pleats and ruffles, how Miyake use[s them] is a real motif through a lot of West African clothing construction.
So anyways, I have that book and I’m super into editorial right now. That’s the design language that I love existing in. I ever so slightly dipped my toe with Shadowbox, but even that was highly dramatized. In terms of the cover, the “i’m so tired” video and “drunk prayer” video, but on this one, I’m getting really strictly editorial. The language of fashion, not the clothes, but how fashion is photographed and advertised and presented is super sexy to me right now. I’ve been leaning into that. I just wanted to do something that felt like a ‘90s I Am. magazine spread, and also the themes of elevation or ascendance or whatever the fuck: Mavi’s better. He’s flying, he’s more famous, he’s getting more money. That outfit is crazy. It’s like a fitted wingsuit. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever worn for sure.
The idea of The Pilot and then First In Flight, how did that all come together?
First In Flight came first. [It’s] me trying to contribute to the North Carolina hip hop pantheon. When Kendrick said, King of the West Coast and all this shit, that shit’s cool as hell when niggas step into the responsibility of their section. And “First In Flight” is what’s emblazoned on the North Carolina license plate. That’s a nod to the Wright brothers having the first successful flight in Kittyhawk, North Carolina. I got really into the zaniness of invention, whether that’s me inventing myself or inventing a new sound or inventing a new process. Invention is really a curious mental space to operate in because it’s at the same time, very childlike, naive and hopeful, but it’s also strictly disciplined in order to imagine something that doesn’t exist. And then to make it exist requires two separate parts of your brain working, really free-flowing at times and strict at times. I thought that was really cool.
And then I got into…at first I wanted my project to be super Afrofuturistic, right? Then I thought, what if we do steam futurism? What if we got a rearward-facing futurism? What would be Afro futuristic in 1920? Flight got really super cool and sexy to me, and then I got into mythologizing. Me and Thebe were talking about it. Like me and Thebe’s title for this album is Niggas Can Flop. [Laughs]. And so then we got into Tar Beach, [and how] the Black Panthers wore aviators and bombers. Or the Tuskegee Airmen or Michael Jordan…maybe because of actual embodied oppression and being chained — [Black people] got a real interest in aerial escape and aerial liberation. I started to think of, what if the airplane was a stolen invention from a Black man, what would that look like?
Was there any literature or anything that you looked into as far as Afrofuturism from prior generations?
Yeah, a few things. There was a man who filed a patent in New Orleans for a flying machine that got thrown under the rug…that was hella cool. The homie that is on tour with me, Jaylen, his uncle, was one of the first Black men to ever have a pilot’s license in the state of North Carolina that was taught directly by the Tuskegee Airmen, a lot of shit. So I’m still making my album. A lot of the reading and the research and shit is just being commenced, I’ve been on the road and all this shit. But yeah, that’s where I’m going for it. A very embodied study.
In your statement, you referenced that First In Flight represents you “leaning even further into collaboration in the community and new territory that excites you.” What does that community look like outside of musical collaboration?
Man, I think it looks like family time and travel. These last two tours have been crazy because you realize when you’re on tour, you need everybody who’s there and you learn what you need everybody for and what everybody needs from you. Being a part of a living organism on a tour or just in a musical setting is really good and makes me feel useful and gives me place in times where I have to be away from my family.
And even outside of that, just in my city, moving around in different third spaces, I am really close with a lot of the Black-owned businesses like coffee shops and skate parks and recreation areas. Introducing diversion, relaxation, and fellowship into the Black community is hella important to me. I think communion is a lost art in our community, and Black culture is increasingly becoming a consumer’s culture. The times when Black people feel the most Black these days are when there’s a movie out that we all go see, or there’s a halftime show that we all see…they’re all modes of consumption. Even a lot of millennial nostalgia is, “Remember when we bought Blue Magic?” or “Remember when we bought Tamagotchi, or Remember when we watched BET?” All consumption.
The millennials actually did have access because they were before the generation of suburban Black kids. By and large, compared to us Gen Zers, they have a living memory of traditional Black fellowship in the church, at the barbecue [on] July 4th, but then familial trauma [and] economic aspirations spread the Black family really far across the nation. And so those things weren’t passed down. And all we have left is, “Remember when we bought this?”
Community, meaning something deeper than shared consumption habits, is something really deep to me. Making art is a really important way [toward] that for me, but also not making art. We are doing another giveback in December, and we’re doing a SNAP drive and we’re doing a bunch of shit in the city. And all of us though. The homie Mike Jones, who did the Black Excellence jersey for the Hornets — because me and Reuben Vincent did [a giveback] last year — he was like, “Nigga, let’s just all do it.” And I’m like, yeah. I think a lot of those third spaces in the city [are] what allowed us to even get closer to the same page as the arts community.
How was it on tour with Alchemy and Gibbs? What was that like?
[There] was a night in LA where both of them had their kids on stage. And I love that because sometimes this job feels unsustainable to a well-adjusted and happy personal life or successful family relationships or discipline. They represented a model of sustained happiness. They’re pros, man. They’re not fuckin’ super tragic artists. They’re not tragic poets. It’s like, nigga, we worked hard at this for 20 years. So yeah, we are one of them ones and we’re stepping into it and we deserve it. I love that.
So I always wonder, as an opener, did you watch their sets or —
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Freddie Gibbs, he’s from a similar performance tradition as me, just super breath control, man. Super athletic rapper on stage. I fuck with Freddie. Him and Al were kind of good cop/bad coppin’ me on the older homie side. Al was like, “Oh man, great job.” And Freddie’s like, [in dry voice] “Hell yeah, for sure.” But then at the end of the tour, Freddy’s like, “Bro, thank you so much.” And I was like, “Damn, bro. You was watching.” He hit me with the Earl Sweatshirt, secret admirer/big homie shit, that shit was sick. So I really fuck with G. It’s crazy. He operates in an area of rap [where] he’s able to be so many things at once and I love that. And I think he really deserves it. He got more arms than a lot of niggas that people group him with. He’s also way bigger than them too.
Are you saying that’s a similar dynamic to you and Earl in terms of now being as vocal about congratulations and things like that?
Oh, no, no, no. He is. I’m just talking about when I first met him, I didn’t even think I was going to rap. I think I stayed there for two weeks and on night 13, he woke me up in the middle of the night and was like, “Come on.” So I don’t even think it’s a non-vocal, congratulations. He gave me my flowers throughout the whole tour. But I think niggas are trying to see how you holding this shit. You know what I’m saying? Over the course of an entire thing before they tell you that you held your own the entire way. And I super respect that actually it is a way to rebuild our culture and our tradition more sustainably.
You mention the pursuit of being a millionaire multiple times on the project. How do you balance the desire for financial freedom with the stigma against wealth and capitalism in society?
I want financial freedom because I don’t want to be poor, and I don’t think anybody wants to be poor, and I don’t think poverty is a necessary condition in the human spectrum of possibility. I’m interested in transmuting all my good works, which in my life are my artistic works, into actions and systems that at minimum improve the quality of Black life in my local community.
[Pulls up “Terms & Conditions lyrics]: “That requires me to relentlessly pursue money, land, guns, and useful knowledge for the purpose of creating and maintaining healthy and productive black communities. It means the cultivation of a culture that reinforces a unified vision of black wellbeing and continuous advancement is also to speak for oneself and to share, to share with one’s community the following critical aspects, knowledge, wisdom, understanding, freedom, justice, equality, food, clothing, shelter, love, peace, and happiness.” So at any point if there’s any confusion about what I’m doing and why and how, there’s a track on Let the Sun Talk called “Terms & Conditions.” that basically [explains] all of this. “I’m relentlessly pursuing money, guns, land and useful knowledge relentlessly.”
What are you looking forward to in the near future?
Trying to launch my foundation, trying to build a board for it because I realized…so I wrote our curriculum and all this shit and got a really detailed budget, got a 501C3, got a bank account and shit. But then it’s like, nigga, I’ve probably been home 28 days in the last six months. So yeah, I need a president. I’m excited to meet the people who will help advise me on that. And also I’m living in the majority, like 50% of the financial ask of the organization and shit. So super tough shit. I’m excited to get that shit cracking and kind of step into my post-25 art community leadership at the crib. I just need some people who can help me coordinate that.
I think everybody is super all hands on deck on my music career and that’s becoming more necessary as it becomes a bigger monster to contain. But I think I need an entire separate crew of people to advise me on my good works and my political journey.
What kind of work do you intend to do with the foundation?
Arts education and a tech grant to to distribute fully loaded laptops to underprivileged Black kids — even though it’s illegal to pay underprivileged Black kids in my fundraising expense. But yeah, basically to give the means of production in the arts to children in my city who don’t have it. My city is overwhelmingly a banking city. At our HBCU, Johnson C Smith, the financial department is by far the most well-funded and all the humanities degrees have kind consolidated into one degree. So it’s clear that the city is seeing a greater incentive in investing into the finance industry. Banks are all headquartered there, second-biggest banking city.
But the way I see it, I don’t believe there are creatives or non-creatives or artists or non-artists. I think art is a human behavior, like fucking is a human behavior. Even if you don’t do it, you can do it. And I think that an arts education raises the quality of life for everybody involved. And I think that it’s important that as a society we reinvest. People are super afraid of AI. The reason people should be afraid of AI is that, A, it fucking sucks and it is destroying the earth and B, because you told everybody that ethics don’t matter and now you’ve created something that will destroy a lot of shit if not negotiated by really disciplined ethics.
How are the piano lessons going?
They’re fire man. I kind of ain’t been in a while. I ain’t been home in a while, but learning a new thing…sucking at something is super fire. Especially for me because I think learning something how it’s supposed to be learned is cool. If you’re picking up what I’m putting down, I think learning something in a really rapper way is hella being like, yeah, you see I’m garnering all this attention for doing this new thing, but really I don’t give a fuck to learn it all the way in no meaningful way. That shit hella lame to me. I think if you’re going to learn ballet but you don’t want your feet to bleed, you’re kind of lame. If you want to learn how to play music, then you should learn how to play music. You learn how to read it, write, do it all how they used to do if you want to be in tradition. So yeah, getting into that tradition has been hella cool and hella humbling in a way that’s very necessary, bro.
Capitalism doesn’t really encourage people to be lifelong learners, or especially not lifelong rookies, and especially people like myself who might’ve had success from young adulthood basically uninterrupted, it’s super important that you do that type of shit.
