“Am I out of time?,” Maryland rapper-producer redveil asks, practically gasping for air, in the opening minutes of his latest project sankofa. That’s a startling question to hear from someone in their early 20s, and it’s one that animates every thought, bar, and beat across the album. Entirely self-produced and inspired by the titular Ghanaian interconnected heart symbol—and its specific relation to the Akan proverb “it is not taboo to go back for what you forgot (or left behind)”—sankofa presents redveil at his most boisterous and introspective, digging further into his past in order to illuminate his future.

redveil began his career when he was just a teenager in Prince George’s County, MD making music with his friends while playing videogames. He had some musical experience—he briefly played drums with his cousins in their church’s band in Houston —but after hearing The Internet’s “Palace/Curse” from their third studio album Ego Death, and being inspired by artists like Earl Sweatshirt and J. Cole, he quickly began learning the piano; and, shortly after, how to make beats. Those lessons followed him through his 2019 debut Bittersweet Cry and to his breakout albums, 2020’s Niagara and 2022’s learn 2 swim. What started as a hobby turned into a creative and therapeutic outlet, with swim in particular, released on his 18th birthday, stacking feelings of anxiety, triumph, and PG pride on top of shimmering, genre-expanding production.

sankofa is a concept he’s been tinkering with in some form since he was 17. Initially, it began as an album under another name that eventually dissolved, and earlier iterations of what would become sankofa were marred by an avalanche of ideas that caused him to change direction every few weeks. redveil moved to California at the start of 2024 and credits that transition, along with attending concerts by artists like Hiatus Kaiyote and billy woods and the general perspective that comes with aging, with bringing the album into clearer focus. “I found comfort and acceptance when I found more ways to appreciate the beauty of all of the parts of where I come from; whether they’re good or bad or pretty or not,” he says. “You can always be the person you want to be, but you also can’t run away from who you truly are and what you come from.”

He characterizes each of his albums as diary entries, and marks sankofa as the moment where he became more lyrically open and vulnerable. “Clarity was one of the biggest things in my head as I was making this album. I need to be more vivid, more direct,” he stresses. That directness translates to both the lyrics and his performances. His rap verses are much more energetic than before—several of them, particularly on songs like “history” and “pray 4 me,” are yelled to the point that his voice becomes hoarse. Anxieties only gleaned on previous albums are, here, fully fleshed out in moments like the two-song run of “buzzbeater/black christmas” and “glimpse of you” that closes the album. They turn redveil’s origins as a beatmaker, a sold-out show at The Roxy in Los Angeles, and his volatile relationship with his older brother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia into a panorama of creation, grief, and ultimately, hope for a brighter tomorrow.

Faith also plays a strong role, as redveil “picks apart the benefits and drawbacks of Black religiousness” and carries the pieces that resonate with him most into a new understanding of his relationship to God. This thematic latticework is driven home through visual motifs on the cover and in videos, which feature a character named Rosie, a ghostly presence dressed like a 1900s-era deaconess, and ironworks renditions of the sankofa symbol, signaling the merging of past and present that defines the future.

Like redveil’s previous albums, sankofa is entirely self-produced and composed, but this time, there’s more of an emphasis on live instruments and studio equipment than samples. learn 2 swim and playing with fire were mostly composed at home, but after moving to California, redveil had access to studios with more expansive options, from Rhodes electric pianos to synths. This, combined with a rotating list of session musicians and samples dotted throughout, led to the lush and exuberant beats powering sankofa. The march of “lone star” is set by whirring synths, Mikey Freedom Hart’s gauzy organ, and Myles Martin’s sharp drumline that ticks like a clock. “brown sugar” and “save” both have a bright springy quality to them that recall reggae and soul as much as R&B and hip-hop. redveil’s ever-expanding production and composition skills contribute to the diaristic nature of each of his projects, demonstrating growth and reflection in real time. sankofa is proof that as he matures, he’s growing into new sonic spaces, unafraid to experiment with his voice and defy the imposed limitations of the genre he first emerged in.

By leaning further into more organic production, he’s embracing his creativity as a producer first and hoping listeners will catch onto the musical bread crumbs he’s leaving behind. “I love being a maximalist,” he explains. “I love having little moments for people to catch and hold onto in the production. As time goes on, I always do the bulk of the production because that’s such an important part of my artistic identity, so I think it’s a natural progression of being a producer; and a rapper, but at some moments, a producer first. Sometimes, a sample alone doesn’t always do the trick when you want it to be you. So it was me wanting to put more of myself into it.”

sankofa came together, in one form or another, over the course of four years, and learning to open up in order to take these next steps as an artist, and as a man, was anything but easy. “I’ve learned how much my roots matter to me, as someone who’s trying to be a happier, more at-peace human being. I truly value where I came from, I feel empowered,” he says. You can hear that confidence in the way he calls himself “Kittitian Jesus” near the end of “or so i,” in the way he learns to talk his shit more on “lone star,” and in calling for support from family and friends on “pray 4 me.” When sankofa ends, these arduous victories feel wholly earned and quietly inevitable.

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