Photo by Avery Jaysav
MARI GETI has been rapping and producing their own music since they were 11. Generally based out of the New York City/Connecticut area, they’ve been spending the past few months moving around (more on this wayward meandering in a bit).
For “RISKY,” their latest single and video, they demonstrate their humorous sense of adventure. The video itself opens with the musician in a canoe on top of train tracks, an image that invokes a wandering spirit faced with the irony of immobility. It’s a funny image, but calls to mind that feeling of static that resonates with the position many of us have been in over the last year: a desire to travel, explore, expand horizons that is limited by the inability to really get moving.
The song itself deals with the idea of resisting the impositions of someone else’s vision for what you should be and how you should act. “A lot of people tell me how to use my voices,” they rap in a frenetic tone. “I don’t really appreciate that.” The line is followed with footage of the musician washing themselves off in a woodland stream, perhaps cleansing themself of the burden of expectation that is projected upon them by others. The “risk” of “RISKY” might be just that: living your own truth and being fully yourself, unconcerned with the strictures imposed upon you by external forces that expect you to fit into the mold of some perceived status quo. Full of really fascinating locales and landscapes, undoubtedly the video’s coolest sequence comes towards the end, a shot that features the rapper standing in front of a large derelict boat that has been beached on the coastline. Looking at the image, it almost seems unreal, or maybe a lost animation from the Plastic Beach era of Gorillaz. But sure enough, there’s MARI GETI hanging off the ship’s bow.
Admittedly, MARI GETI’s vocal tone might not be for everyone: there is a frantic energy as they explore their range of yelps and yammers over a beat that sounds less like hip-hop and more like downtempo indietronica. But there is undoubtedly a talent here that will find a home in the ears and hearts of many listeners, a unique weirdness that is worth keeping an eye on.
Watch the video for MARI GETI’s “RISKY” – directed by Edo Lee – below, and stream their album MANYVOICES via Spotify and Bandcamp.