"You're at a club. Maybe Miami. The DJ has been spinning the same Ozuna song for what seems like forever. The lights are so dim and the haze is so thick that you can't see five feet in front of you on the dancefloor. You have conversations that you can only remember pieces of, and fleeting thoughts that slip in and out between horny nonsense and life-affirming questions."
"In spirit, it's disorienting music that falls somewhere between Metro Zu's psychedelic kick-back tunes and Max B's nights of navigating local rap fame off sips of Grand Cru straight from the bottle. That seems to be Xav's way of handling the uneasy transition from fucking around with regional rap trends on the internet to a major label debut on Atlantic, which is more expansive and polished than anything he's ever made."
"But, for the most part, it's still Xavier cracking dick jokes and threading together too many microgenres to count. So that means there's no industry-mandated Don Toliver feature or BNYX beat, and no obvious interference with his chaos. It's just a collage of all the influences that have powered Xavier's music all along, blown up for the maximalist style of commercial rap."
Xavier is a disorienting dance-rap record about being at the party for too long, capturing hazy club nights and fragmented conversations. The music positions itself between Metro Zu's psychedelic kick-back and Max B's late-night navigation of local rap fame, merging regional microgenres into a maximalist, commercial sound. The major-label debut on Atlantic is more expansive and polished than earlier mixtapes, but it retains Xav's chaotic humor, sexual jokes, and overloaded ideas. The album avoids obvious industry interference or cameo features, instead presenting a collage of influences with ambitious tracks like the multi-part, beat-switching "iPhone 16."
Read at Pitchfork
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