As a songwriter, you should disappear the effort of making your music until it sounds like it just poured out of you, so it feels eternal yet new every time we encounter it, like the morning sun. By this rubric, 29-year-old Jamaican-American Micah Davis – Masego – may be a magician. Early work such as The Pink Polo EP introduced his “TrapHouseJazz” concept, attempting to splice those three disparate black music strains into something stronger and stranger. Yet his 2018 debut, Lady Lady, while filled with lovely tunes, felt a little familiar. Alt-soul bedroom jams with intriguing diversions – nothing that would frighten Solange or André 3000 fans.
This time, magic happens. Masego is more unfiltered, more assertive, whether on the pretty pop of Two Sides, thrillingly weird In Style or amapiano-adjacent Say You Want Me. Davis can sing seductively and play sax, piano, cello and guitar, but knows not to peacock. The key is the space in the arrangements, effortlessly vanishing trap and jazz into house, hip-hop and many other genres with a rhythmic charge, propelling the ghostly harmonies he deploys so cleverly. This is wizard’s work.
