Navy Blue raps as though he’s leading you out of a dark, damp tunnel and into the light. His voice is measured and restrained, often strident, as if he’s talking you through breathing exercises to ground you in the throes of a panic attack. Since Sage Elsesser’s debut LP as Navy Blue, 2020’s Àdá Irin, he’s been paring his music down to be the purest elemental reflection of his heart. Recently, he’s taken to spitting over beats that seem to bear all responsibility for providing his songs with entropy, grafting sample loops and the odd spare instrumental accoutrement onto his voice to give his delivery a necessary weight. Only the vital seems destined to remain in his soliloquies.

Elsesser has continually embraced the solemn, though often it’s tinged with gratitude and catharsis. The approach can verge on restricting—as on 2021’s Navy’s Reprise, whose production felt perfunctory—but he sometimes salvages it through nimble decisions. 2023’s Ways of Knowing, for example, dripped with soul thanks to producer Budgie’s crate-digging touch, letting Elsesser oscillate between hopeful and forlorn sermons. Since getting dropped by Def Jam in early 2024, Elsesser’s venture back into independence has been marked by meandering, introspective exercises in scope and focus, guided by the spectre of an indefinitely shelved project.

But any danger of malaise is absent from his sixth album, The Sword & The Soaring. The motif of the Archangel Michael, an important figure in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, looms over the 16 tracks, creating the sensation that those who passed are watching over us (and fighting on our behalf), even as the pain of their departure remains fresh and as further difficult lessons await on the horizon. Underneath that cover lies Elsesser’s most evocative work since 2020’s stellar opus Song of Sage: Post Panic!—tender, wrought musings that stretch out over the supremely lush 44-minute landscape, an album that finds comfort in hopelessness without falling victim to its intoxicating caress.

Now 28 years old and far removed from the anonymous, guarded nature of his early SoundCloud drops, Elsesser lets biographical details flow calmly over the riverbanks. On “God’s Kingdom,” he weaves tapestries depicting familial loss and exalting the strength of the surviving lineage in straightforward, intense language: how he was out on “Beale Street with my cousin Reggie” after his aunt and uncle passed, before finding solace in the cold water of Mississippi where his family’s roots are laid. His writing is so startlingly intimate that you can feel the distance between the past and present flattening with each utterance. “When you cried in front of me I saw a man/I know that parenting didn’t go as you planned,” he raps to his father on “If Only…,” speaking plainly over a barebones bass loop, “Seeing you smile means more to me now/I don’t remember you kissing my mother as a child.”

Candor is Elsesser’s superpower on The Sword & The Soaring, even if he doesn’t linger on any one topic for long. His emotional truths arrive with self-destructing messages: hidden deep within the serene harp production on “Guardadas” (which translates from Spanish to the word “Saved”) lies the phrase, “Felt love too scared to enact it,” with his voice barely rising above a whisper. On the opener he makes it clear that “every time I write it’s like a love letter” before preaching about the beauty of spiritual resurrection. He raps, “It’s some things that hurt to understand, like my brother fate/One thing about me is I’m grateful for it all,” letting grief and graciousness mesh over a seedy saxophone loop that would feel at home in a Harlem jazz bar. The efficient movement from topic to topic doesn’t reduce the weight of his words, but ensures that the tracks never feel sluggish— a triumph, especially when the emotional tenor of his register rarely shifts gears.

Even with the extensive catalog of producers—Navy Blue and Child Actor each handling production duties on four tracks, respectively, and Chris Keys, Graymatter, Foisey, and others filling in the gaps—The Sword & The Soaring’s beats fit together like individual pieces of an ancient cipher. Piano progressions that trudge soberly underneath his voice give way to lavish string compositions; swirling wind effects create the sense that we’re in the midst of a grand odyssey. “Sunlight of the Spirit” seems to employ three vocalists: Elsesser, the heavenly vocal sample wailing above him, and the interjecting flute acting as a call-and-response with the rapper’s baritone register. The ebb and flow of the project’s sonic intensity coaxes Elsesser out of his shell at a natural pace. It pays off best on Foisey’s beat on “Tale of Truth,” as his voice swells in lockstep with lush orchestral crescendos, penning manifestations for finally reaching peace despite all the tragedy that preceded it.

Despite the angst Elsesser expresses on The Sword & The Soaring—the losses of his “guardian angel” brother and close friend Ka remain ever present; solemn regrets about his childhood pass through his mind—he extends a bullish optimism, a call to keep on pushing with the love of his family and friends who live on. That hope has buoyed his career: elevating him from a sheepish SoundCloud acolyte, helping him withstand the whiplash of label politics, and seeing him emerge from the wreckage with a staunch clarity of vision. You see it on the outstanding “24 Gospel,” the album’s lone collaboration, where Elsesser and Earl Sweatshirt add another gem to their fruitful partnership: “All the moments spent cryin’, I was meant to laugh/The past don’t hurt as much as it did/I’m intact,” Elsesser raps to kick off his verse. Having weathered storm after storm, the moments when he counts his blessings and checks his scars feel like a breath of fresh air.