If you’re still sleeping on Mozzy, you’re simply doing yourself a disservice.
The rapper from Sacramento, California is back in his element on Spiritual Conversations, spinning tales woven thick with fibers of emotion, truth, pain and the streets that made Mozzy who he is.
For those who’ve been fans from the beginning, it is another solid addition to his catalog and serves as a placating role until his album Gangland Overlord drops later this year. It has been a while since Mozzy dropped a solo project (1 Up Top Akh) and with his recent placement on the Black Panther soundtrack/album in “Seasons,” the timing was definitely right for Mozzy to capitalize on his growing buzz.
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In this regard, Spiritual Conversations is not that different, but it does seem to be a more fine-tuned and cut down approach. Four of the six tracks have features, a majority of them being former collaborators such as YFN Lucci, Jay Rock and of course E Mozzy (a different artist he often collaborates with).
The first track on the album, “In My Prayers,” opens up with Mozzy spitting about how his life has been transgressing in the past few months, the ups and downs that he has been experiencing along his journey up the totem pole of fame.
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To the Mozzy fans who also happen to listen to electro-house, the beat is immediately recognizable as a Porter Robinson sample from his song “Shelter”. Now, I’m not the biggest electro-house fan in the world, but Porter Robinson is one of those artists who can transcend and connect with his hypnotic, one-of-a-kind electronic music.
It is perfect for him and Mozzy to have somehow connected, as Robinson is usually viewed as his own category of music and Mozzy is an outsider within the current world of hip-hop — an artist who keeps it real with whatever he’s doing and going through. They compliment each other very well in a slowed-down, emotional way with Mozzy taking a little bit to connect on the beat. By the time the first hook hit, he had found his groove.
“No Choice” contains a soft opening breaking up into smaller pieces giving Mozzy a free board on which to create. “I suffer from similar inner demons, I been sippin for insignificant reasons” is a bar in the first verse, significant in that Mozzy recently came out on Instagram pouring his lean out, telling the world that he “kicked the cup.”
Music is what he turns to when he’s going through something. He is a steady voice that speaks not from a space of glorification (although some of his songs definitely lean that way and he seemingly claims it), but rather from a place of learned knowledge through time spent down in the trenches.
Mozzy doing his best to show the young ones how to be real with it is a theme that stays persistent throughout his album and the rest of his music. “Cry a little bit but I’m a gangster,” a line from the first song on the EP, is crazy because it wasn’t long ago that showing any emotion at all, even on a track like that, would have been unacceptable for someone like Mozzy.
Overall, this album is a nice teaser for his upcoming full-length album, Gangland Overlord, which remains without a release date as of now. Mozzy continues to improve as an emotional, in-depth lyricist with an exquisite capacity to story-tell. The door is left open for improvement still in his lyrical war-chest and developing deeper themes to make political and societal statements.
Rating: 4/5
