When Sage Elsesser first started anonymously self-releasing his music, listening to him felt like pressing an ear against a bedroom door, eavesdropping on a troubled man and his muffled prayers. Considering the community he’d sprouted from—fashionable Fairfax kids, skateboards in one hand and sponsorships in the other—his affect was markedly sober, a bare-bones hush that foregrounded little more than pen and paper, rhymes and loops. Since then, each of his albums as Navy Blue has been a study in self-interrogation, reckoning with the things closest to his conscience: family, spirituality, and the voices of his ancestors. All the while, his sound has been steadily evolving from the sparse, confessional-booth digs of his earliest days, branching out to accommodate his expanding worldview. Gradually, the microphone hum has faded, along with the scratchiness of the loops and the grainy languor of those grand piano swells: By last year’s Ways of Knowing, it didn’t sound like we were stealing secrets through a closed door anymore. Navy Blue was presenting a fully-produced snapshot of someone who had grown up.
For all its existential baggage, this growth made Navy’s fourth LP feel like a cornerstone of his saga, a glimpse of how he could rap with more than just a distant snare in his headphones. Few moments passed where he was alone—there was constantly a fellow vocalist, a seductive melody, or an ornate live-band arrangement to keep him warm in the dusk of his turmoil. (“I can’t do this shit on my own,” he sang on “Freehold,” and it sounded like it.) Scaling back these accouterments makes Memoirs in Armour, his first release since leaving Def Jam, equally raw and rewarding. In a minimal record that elevates his voice, he ventures back into dusty early-career closets, commanding the no-frills confines he once found his footing in. Stripped-down as the music may be, his words carry more than enough weight to fill out the room. On Memoirs, he doesn’t seem nearly as interested in selling soundscapes as sitting us down and telling us difficult stories.
Although Navy is rarely preachy, his raps can leave you wondering whether you’re going to hell. Part of this is the sheer mass, the brooding existential glare, of the matters he reckons with: the circularity of life, the looming specter of death, the cathartic gratitude that threads these things together. These are hefty subjects in their own right, though Navy’s message is fortified by his disposition, the steely cadence he’s long wielded to synthesize his heaviest burdens. Stern and unflappable, he spends Memoirs staring you in the eye, daring you to avert your gaze. Fittingly, there’s only one track here (“Running Sand”) that eases his onslaught with something close to a chorus; even then, he’s grim, as if reading his lyrics from a crystal ball: “Conceived, you born, you live, you die/My mama said don’t rush it, I can’t function with my pride.” He’s right—it isn’t pride that lines his voice, but reverent longing, stripping the walls of his past selves then studying the debris.
Memoirs in Armour draws from a deep bullpen of guest producers, including the soulful Budgie (“Take Heed”), who worked extensively on Ways of Knowing, and Chuck Strangers (“Boulder”), who shares Navy’s meditative East Coast stomping grounds. For all the prowess they pack on their own, it’s compelling to see them take a backseat, parting the Red Sea for the rugged prophet at center stage. It’s even more compelling to watch Navy navigate the dry earth. “Time Slips,” a jarring eulogy of his sullen past, opens with quite the candidate for Introspective Hip-Hop’s pledge of allegiance: “This is the first time somebody would ever say this on a rap song, but can you turn me down?” Somber as he may sound, his vision is as clear as ever. “Depression was the birth of Navy Blue,” he raps. “My message is to serve a greater you.” He’s talking to us, but he could just as well be talking to himself.