It’s been said that the rapper Rakim, perhaps the greatest of all-time, treated his flow like jazz. He played saxophone in high school, then went on to employ the same level of syncopation in his vocal cadence. He “was trying to write in a John Coltrane solo style,” he once said. “It’s just up and down the scale, any rhythm you want to hit.” The concept revolutionized the still-nascent genre of rap, birthing a new generation of like-minded poets to twist their words around beats with conviction and style.
The Brooklyn-born, New Orleans-based Cavalier is of that ilk. A dynamic lyricist, he delves into a variety of topics — the demographic shift of his old neighborhood, the need for Black empowerment, the mental toll of systemic racism — through a tightly-knit delivery that unfurls without pauses, navigating the scale of Iman Omari’s beats with machinelike precision. It’s easy to get lost in the technical aspects of Cav’s music. It sounds impeccable; the art of it alone is a thing of wonder.
Omari’s arrangements — staggered drums, muted samples and occasional background hums — are equally vital to Cavalier’s sound. Paired together, the rhymes and the beats make for an amorphous mix of jazz, soul and rap, slightly off-kilter like J Dilla’s signature style yet very much a California aesthetic.
“Iman has what I call a signature break,” Cav once told Bandcamp Daily. “He almost created his own breakbeat in a way, he has this specific bop in his beats, the way he’s programming or the way he plays the drums on [them]. You recognize him. Iman’s background is in vocal jazz; he has a gift for melody, it makes his sample ear really, really strong.”
I was introduced to this synergy on Cav’s excellent 2015 album, Lemonade, one of my favorite albums that year. I was already a fan of his solo work, having heard his features alongside rapper/producer Quelle Chris. He’s just one of those people who you want to hear rap, even if it’s about socks or coffee cups or whatever. Cav is such a gifted vocalist that the subject really doesn’t matter.
But when you dig into the lyrics, you realize he’s discussing real shit. “Open Season,” the leading track on his most recent album, 2018’s Private Stock, is a laid-back diss aimed at trigger-happy police officers who harass and kill Black men solely because of racism. But where others rightfully approached the topic with anger, Cav sounded empowered, as if the threat of violence wasn’t even there. “I see the beast, they gunnin’ out in the open, say ‘fuck ‘em’ out in the open, baby,” Cav rapped nonchalantly. That he would say this casually is a form of revolution. He was moving without fear with hope that others would do the same.
He has a good reason to be brave, though. On “Veritas,” we learn that Cav himself was a survivor of gun violence:
Indeed, there’s a subset of Black kids who grow up with this sort of trauma. They either had to dodge bullets or dodge fists, and the anxiety never fully dissipates. Here, Cav examined gun violence from the inside-out. Threats against our lives begin at a young age, and sometimes it comes from people who look like you.
Brooklyn itself is a main character in Cav’s world. From “Doro Wat” to “Go Brooklyn” to “Reprise,” the rapper celebrates home through occasional slang words, nods to the subway and the city’s fashion, and shoutouts of cross streets. On “Go Brooklyn,” in particular, he salutes the borough through what sounds like a New Orleans accent, giving props to his current city in an artful way. By the time “Reprise” rolls around, Cav sounds forlorn when talking about the Brooklyn he used to know. “We need to bring back weed spots,” he declares. “It’s not nostalgia, it’s been my style for a while.” As the song fades, we hear the age-old chant that’s memorialized Brooklyn for years. A fitting conclusion for a rapper and album with such heart and focus.
