Navy Blue - The Sword & The Soaring Review

A meditation on grief, faith and becoming, where Clarice Lispector’s Agua Viva and Navy Blue’s The Sword & The Soaring meet as parallel texts in surrender, revelation and the quiet power of honest art.

I’d finally gotten around to the works of Clarice Lispector, in particular, her 1973 novel ‘Agua Viva’. Going in blind into her style and verbiage, the novel unfolds as a questioning to the world and God about the world and God, meditations on death interspersed with ruminations on jewels and how her words are in translation of her paintings, a grief carried by pure existence. It is a divine ambush. Agua Viva’s success is within its poetic onslaught as revelation; no time for breath as the next sentence I’d make note paragraphs and sentences that had me pause and close my book upon reading, sitting with what was just written and taken in its spectacle beauty as well as. It quickly became scripture, random quotes from the book placed above my bed frame, a quick glance in the morning to remind myself of what artistic integrity looks like, what it means to push against the frame. The way the prose flows, things go over your head and things stick, following it and not concerning myself with the meaning but rather the experience.

By way of interest into a group of rappers based in the states that share (Think MIKE, Mavi, Earl Sweathsirt, Pink Sifu), the music video for Navy Blue’s lead single off his forthcoming record ‘The Sword and The Soaring’ appeared on my YouTube algorithm, and I was curious enough to click and listen. The rapper is captured in fluid states of being as a city envelops him; cars drive past, shots of commuters making their way into work in a unison as Navy Blue finds himself in these vast bodies of people. It’s a striking video helmed by Maxi Hachem, but what held immediate resonance was the opening lyric. ‘God doesn't make it too hard for those who seek/ ’ Now I'm moving so slowly through this river, grief. This metaphor of grief and the journey he is pertaining to is enough to make the heart sing in awe and weep at the same time. Child Actor’s production that finds itself spread throughout the album elevates the angelic quality to this song, a celestial voice on repeat alongside the piano line that is met with intervals of violins and constant percussion. The song finishes on the repeated lyric “Kept it bottled in, we was dealt so many losses that we gotta win”. As if he’s talking to himself at this point, Navy Blue quietly chants this notion that the optimism that comes through with experiences of simultaneous plight. This rapid stream of thought possesses sentimentality and reflection that had me at awe, essentially replaying the song back as a form of study, wanting to understand every reference and device employed that makes this track overwhelmingly beautiful. An extended metaphor is enough to make the heart sing in awe.

Navy Blue’s tenth studio albumThe Sword and The Soaring is the prophetic being brought to life, verses becoming parables offering deep introspection in the narrator’s steps towards healing. Engaging with Agua Viva and this album so closely in time felt like a symbiotic experience, that a sequel of unrelated sorts was provided to me via the sixteen tracks. Adopting many titles, in a language of heroics. In God’s Kingdom, he’s Navy Blue the reaasembler,’ in ‘Guardadas’, he returns to Sage, becoming ‘Navy Blue the marksman’ on the track ‘My Heartbeat’. It speaks to the various names we carry and roles we possess, uplifting them by placing these names of grandiosity onto them. It’s decadent in description, these words take you to scenes in your mind as you are embroiled in a man’s pursuit of sincerity and clarity of his own mind and emotions. There are moments of quiet where percussion is lacking, giving the track a heavenly, detached impression, contrasted with classic hip hop sample features (high pitched vocal harmony) with a Navy Blue touch. The closing track ‘Phoenix’ feels like a final ascension, taking in all of the previous expressed lessons and consolidating them into one last final expression, the lessons learned from pain and hurt in combination with all of the things that make him love, a beautiful conjunction.

I often try to remove myself from reviews, instead, coming from a point of the critic; objective, critical, perhaps stoic in expression. In an album that to put it simply, has moved me like no other release this year has, I find the desire to break out of this music critic mindset. I found myself moved on the walk to work, stirred as I sat at my balcony looking down at the estate with the album playing in my ears, touched by the level of introspection and evolution that had come across on this record. I wanted these revelations for myself. And it feels juvenile to admit to wanting to grow as a person due to an album, but it’s also me being honest and trying not to deny the power of good art.  Pelted by these revelations, gratitude and spiritual that inhabits his lyrics makes this his strongest project to date. A testimony to growth and acceptance, quietly and beautifully delivered in such a way that mirrors an unrelenting magic similar to the aforementioned Clarice Lispector and her ability to weave in and out of thoughts and tales. What is accomplished on this album by Navy Blue makes it easily one of the best rap releases of the year.