Sometimes, a glimpse of your reflection in a mirror can feel as disorienting as a dolly zoom, a jarring flash of presence that pulls you into a dark corner of yourself. Mavi experiences several such moments of revelation on Shadowbox, his howling, heart-rending third album. Each glance sends him spinning off his axis, frantically flailing until he can snag a piece of ground. “I’m So Tired” opens with one of these realizations: “Today my grandmother turn 80/And I’m on three Percocets, I ain’t even ate yet.” Mavi holds his own gaze as though it’s Persephone beckoning seductively from the bottom of the abyss. Synth bass and splashy cymbals cascade around him like a collapsing ceiling, reverb threatening to engulf his pleas for absolution.

Mavi’s music can almost feel voyeuristic, as though we’re watching his brain activity from behind a two-way mirror. The Charlotte emcee churns in existential circles, pondering towering concepts like the conflict between fate and free will, or whether identity is innate or constructed. This is painful work; he was only 21 when he released End of the Earth, and he’d already concluded that existence is suffering—you either wallow or you press on. Despite its glowing golden-hour grooves, 2022’s Laughing So Hard, it Hurts was awash in self-doubt, Mavi’s joints aching from trying to keep balance.

On Shadowbox, the darkness that licked at the edges of his previous work has nearly overtaken him. As Laughing So Hard, it Hurts propelled him to a new level of stardom, Mavi experienced a spell of personal problems; the substances he hoped would ease his mind dulled his creative drive and aggravated his depression. When he emerged, he started writing unflinchingly about how exhausting it is to untangle a mental health crisis. References to drugs and drink abound; grief and heartache permeate every verse. He remains concerned with many of the same evergreen philosophical questions, but he’s less sure there are any answers to be found.

Thankfully, Shadowbox never buckles under the weight of its overcast themes. It’s as inventive as any Mavi project, near virtuosic in execution. Despite the narcotic cloud surrounding the album’s creation, Mavi’s writing is more impressive than ever: rich with imagery and metaphor and packed with spiraling internal rhymes, but still piercing and direct. The most unsparing passages hit like a fist, like when he says, “I was taking pills while mom was making dinner” on “Tether,” or how he admits, on “Grindstone,” “I claim I’m quitting, it’s been too many tomorrows.” A water motif shows up throughout the first half of the record, sometimes offering salvation through baptism or cleansing, other times promising to envelop Mavi completely.

In the past, Mavi’s slippery flow ran in rivulets across the percussion, sometimes sliding off the end of a bar. He still raps in thick, elliptical patterns on Shadowbox but hews closer to each track’s rhythmic center as if steadying himself on a guardrail. On some songs, his signature sing-songy lilt is more pronounced. The mellifluous delivery disguises the more distressing details of his struggles, but there’s an uneasy edge to it. When the spring in his voice fades, his inflection more directly announces the theme, which helps decipher his densely constructed verses. He’s anxious and insistent on “I Did,” his voice projecting from the back of his throat, seconds away from cracking. On “Too Much to Zelle,” he croaks out a teetering triplet flow that gets raspier as the track continues, his energy and hope rapidly depleting. When he admits that it “took all [he] could muster to mutter help,” he sounds drained, the blooming oasis in sight but still out of reach.

The resplendent production serves as a counterweight to the album’s grim subject matter. The beats are moody but melodic, keeping time with soft drums or a pulsing bassline. Gone is the lo-fi grime Mavi used to gravitate toward, replaced with a vaporous chill that settles around his vocals like an autumn rain. There are floating ambient synths—like the twinkling second half of Psymun’s “Open Waters” or lopsided oscillations of Alexander Spit’s “Tether”—and resonant pianos, like the chords that ring into infinity on “The Giver.” “Latch,” one of the strongest tracks, is a slab of Shuggie Otis-style psych-funk, replete with chiming guitar and celestial vocal harmonies. The beats are gorgeous and kaleidoscopic; the bright palette suggests not all is lost, that hope glimmers out there in the distance.

It’s tough to find a discernible redemption arc, though. The closest Shadowbox comes to a feeling of catharsis is in the coda of “My Own Way,” when Mavi stops rapping and producer Monte Booker brings in hard-hitting drums for a full minute. But as the track trudges along and Mavi whisper-sings, “You know I’m gonna pray,” the beat gets increasingly distorted, as if it’s a damaged cassette tape disintegrating in the deck. Perhaps Mavi doesn’t believe in clean resolutions, acknowledging that life’s a complicated collage of overlapping experiences. You persevere because you must.