A curious thread runs through the songwriters emerging now from Generation Z – arguably themselves the most sought-after demographic as it concerns the Content Machine and those who keep it churning. When the Internet first democratised the opinions of you and everyone you know, the collective understanding was that the beast needed to be fed. The World Wide Web promised you more eyes and ears than you had ever been used to, and in turn, you gave it every quasi-thought that passed through your head. This philosophy birthed an entire generation of artists – writers,
performers, filmmakers, and musicians – who believed their public persona could rest solely on their ability to Keep It Real. Any armor was artifice and, thus, frivolous. Any grandiosity was gluttonous and, thus, punishable. Any privacy was secrecy and, thus, shameful. What started as an honest exercise in (over)sharing and analysis quickly turned into a weaponization of ideas, when the Information Highway transformed overnight into a Free-Trade Marketplace. Every once in a while, your inane thoughts – once so innocent – were pushed center stage to compete in a Contest of Relatability. A contest many didn’t ask to be a part of, and where the winner was crowned with the burden to never stray from the beaten path, and the loser banished to a short period of living vintage (keeping their opinions to themselves and off the Internet).
This early mandate of online life in the early 2010s made for a very interesting, albeit disaffected personalities in pop culture, where singers and performers, along with
artists in other fields, pantomimed normalcy in order to be allowed to continue
making art, so long as it didn’t bother anyone, in any way shape or form. Stars soared to never-before-seen heights. And the downfall, when it came, was brutal and catastrophic.
An entire generation came of age watching people with bona fide dreams being put to the test in a theatre of survival at the edge of a cliff. Caught between a rock and a hard place of curation and authenticity, many people, once defying gravity, were lost to the void. Surely, there could be a different path.
A curious thread runs through the songwriters emerging now from Generation Z –
especially the ladies. Once upon a time, the sheen of a well-packaged brand would be considered plastic. Now, there is an intrinsic understanding among the younger crop about the value of good packaging. In this age of the resurgence of the pop girl, there has never been a better time to have a sense of humor about the metaphor.
The artist LAVI’s debut EP “529” is a push and pull of many sonic elements, lyrical
styles and trains of thought. Whether intentional or not, the artist on her four-track EP contradicts several of her ideas, sometimes back-to-back in terms of sequencing. It is also a highly curated and self-assured project, where the person behind the capitalized name is in full control of the arena in which her persona is set forth to play. Upon listening to the record, I surmised a lot about the potential of the artist LAVI. But I also really knew next to nothing about the person behind it. Luckily, she peeled back some layers behind the tracks. But not all the way, though, of course.
“Titli”/“Wait” or Mind Over Matter Over Mind
“You saw right through me with this question,” the artist behind LAVI says, when
asked about the most irrational reason she has ever chosen to move on from someone. “When I was young and new to dating, one time I had to break up with someone because I didn’t like the way they chewed.”
“Cause I want everything at once// And everybody to me”
The first track on the EP is the only one that has vocals and lyrics in a language other
than English. LAVI, who says that her dreams are “bilingual”, uses the metaphor of
the titular butterfly to convey how her heart finds itself feeling restless. A winged
creature isn’t the most obvious choice for a stand-in in a song about feeling weighed down by the guilt of a fleeting nature, but she makes her points. The song is an
almost regretful ode to the flighty nature of a young heart, and the struggle to stay
grounded long enough for anything to develop. Although one could argue that
choosing a two-winged totem wouldn’t be the straightest road to feeling grounded.
It’s conceptually abstract yet sound, something that she says comes almost
subconsciously to her. LAVI’s dreams are “often just abstract haunting concepts,” by
her own admission. “I have also attended concerts in my dreams in languages I don’t
understand, if that counts.” When asked if she has ever faced the fatal consequence of losing a friend to matters of the fleeting heart, LAVI, the artist, responds with silence.
“Your analogy could//use a little flare.”
The second track is lovingly inspired by the world of Afrobeat, a uniquely authentic
niche in the landscape of music today that ferociously stays true to its roots.
Naturally, the artist is deeply inspired by the genre. “Sounds like these aren’t
culturally introduced to us. So, I wouldn’t get to this track if I didn’t listen to Tems,
SZA, Doechii, and Ravyn Lenae,” she elaborates, citing Amaarae’s album “Fountain
Baby” as a heavy (with two extra y’s for emphasis) influence on this project.
The narrative, however, veers off into less-than-groovy meditations, with the speaker
blaming her “ambition vertigo” as the reason that she can’t envision herself in a
locked-down relationship immediately. “I’m dizzy from all the dreaming– I want to
do it all!” the artist explains when asked what that concept actually is. “I prioritise
my ambitions over my relationships and that bites me back often. People give their
partners their all, and I admire that. But I could never do that or expect them to do the same for me.”
Whether or not the extreme sentiment comes from the same place as the fleeting
heart, it is important to note that it is an extremely honest admission of a young, self-assured person with dreams in a world that might up and combust at any moment. The need for security within oneself echoes throughout the track, and outside of it as well. When asked whether the “flare/flair” lyric was inspired by something in particular (perhaps a text message), she pulls back the curtain on the feeling of miscommunication in the most connected time in history. “This lyric was about someone that completely misunderstood me. They saw me put my walls up and concluded that I was incapable of emotions – the “analogy” -, very very far away
from the person I actually am,” she decodes. “The worst part is that I believed their
narrative and thought I understood myself better from the way they saw me.” An
admission that begs a follow-up: is being flighty borne out of a desire for self-preservation for LAVI?
“Second hand Mercedes”/“Gullible” or Bravado vs. Self-Doubt
“Always the critic/Never the artist”
By the third track, LAVI’s shifted gears twice on the project, swerving through ideas
of genres with the practiced hand of a songwriter and the reverence of a listener. “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” she replies, when asked what her go-to album by a
female rapper is, following the classic pull with an additional “A Liquid Breakfast” and “Sometimes I Might Be Introvert”.
It is the most out and out bratty song on the whole project, with nonchalance front and centre, where the artist substitutes the self-pity that often associates itself with the life of an independent musician with a never-say-die attitude. She teams up with frequent collaborator Sudan on the hip-hop-inspired track. Collaborations may give many new artists some pause, but not LAVI. “Collaborating with Sudan is effortless. He lets me do my things and I let him blow my mind with his ideas every single
time,” she says when asked if its any different working solo versus with a peer. She
also goes on to call writing the already-indulgent song a “guilty pleasure”. “I didn’t
hold back on being corny or cringy (sic) and it felt amazing!”
On the course of embracing being corny, I note that it’s a classic, tried-and-true trope
in rap music to name a track after a brand-name car, and I ask her the natural followup.
“I was 20 and I learnt how to drive manually in a knocked-up maroon Ford Fiesta. I
miss her so much,” she replies.
“Maybe I’ve wanted this for so long that//I’m not even sure I want it at all”
One final aural shift on the project in the form of the final track finds the speaker
pondering on the nature of change, and what that does to the idea of a life-long
dream. Sparse and haunting, the artist straddles the belief that some dreams make
self-sabotage worth it, something she elaborates on later when asked about. How hard is balancing self-sabotaging tendencies (butterflies, chewing and distrust aside) with the very normal human function of growth?
“I suppose as an artist I find myself craving for the lows sometimes, to revel in the
liquid state that maybe I’ll write something I actually mean,” she admits, adding on to
a statement about how a social media life makes the self-hatred especially easy. She
ruminates on temporary nature of things, singing “Everything dies//Everything.”
Does that make her an existentialist – hyper-aware of the passage of time and
operating from a “it is all important” perspective, or does it give rise to nihilistic
tendencies, where nothing is important enough because it all ends. She answers,
fittingly, with a metaphor.
“They’re sisters! Same bloodline, different personalities. They live in the same house,
different rooms. Existentialism is happier than nihilism. Their parents hate them
both.”
Epilogue
The artist LAVI, whose favourite time of the day is the morning, doesn’t think all the
wrong people have imposter syndrome. “There is an uncomfortable truth there that I
don’t think I have still confronted. It didn’t help that Sudan added the most
melancholic synth there and brought out all the emotions in a language that I simply
couldn’t express,” she says of the project’s closer. She continues with a more
optimistic outlook on the nature of creating art and feeling fit enough to do so. “It’s
not a trait randomly distributed. It’s a product of consequence. My imposter
syndrome, for example, keeps me humble. I often wish that voice in my head of ‘you
don’t belong here’ would jump itself off a high bridge. But I also know she keeps my
ego in check. In fact, knowing that most people hate themselves to some degree
actually helps tone down the syndrome. Sorry!”
We end up devoting more time than the runtime of the EP in her explaining the
thought process behind it. Interestingly, she says she chooses not to search on Google in full sentences: “Keywords, please. I don’t have the time to explain.”
At the time of the conversation, she was reading Patti Smith’s Just Kids and feeling
“so much lately,”, even though it is to be noted that she would not call herself a
reader. The artist behind the persona of LAVI hopes to see the artist RAYE in concert,
to a Gen Z-morbid degree (“it might actually kill me”), and appreciates breakfasts
with a good breeze. She chooses anything off of Brent Faiyaz’s Larger Than Life to
add to a playlist made for someone, but calls her biggest red flag her ability to “move
on easily”. As for her biggest green flag:
“Will make you laugh.”
