Almost exactly a month removed from his long-awaited full-length return, NAV has made it evident that success never sleeps.
While on his victory lap for his most recent LP Demons Protected by Angels (Sept. 9), which garnered 63,000 first week sales, NAV paid a visit to the Rap Life Apple Music show hosted by Ebro Darden for a brief interview on Oct. 7. Within the conversation, the Toronto producer-rapper shed light on his new album, his drug use, his connection with Internet Money and even alluded to his next album being near completion.
When discussing why DPBA‘s intro “Count on Me” was so intimate and emotional, NAV told the story of when he recorded the track, and how his confidants like Cash XO and others pushed him to be hist best.
“So one of my close friends, Rex Kudo, he’s a producer, he was with me in Toronto with his friends Carlton and all them. They were making production for me and stuff, so I put my iPhone down on the piano recording and I played the chords that are on the piano in that song,” he said. “Then Cash was on Rex to tell me like, ‘Yo, get vulnerable. Tell NAV to get vulnerable on this shit.’ Then I went and started recording and Rex was like, ‘Nah, more vulnerable.’ And I got nervous and kind of scared. Then, it just started, the lyrics and everything. And it’s crazy how much traction that song is getting, compared to other songs because people like that moment.”
Later on when NAV began hinting at his next project, which is in the works and will likely be titled NAV2, he spoke about how much he has produced for it by himself. Starting his career as solely a producer, it’s convenient and efficient for NAV to self-produce his own music as an artist, as it always yields fabulous results. Along with this, he estimated that about 80% of the project has already been produced, and that specifically five or six of the songs for the track list were made solely by him
“And if I want to be honest, production wise, I probably produced 80% of the next album already,” he said. “This one, I probably did like… I was hands on every song, but myself, like four to five. But on this new one, so far, I have five, six songs already done, fully produced by me.”
At the start of October, NAV sent out a tweet that had confirmed he had began working on NAV2 as opposed to a deluxe version of DPBA, which has become somewhat of a norm now for mainstream hip-hop acts.
But, considering he’ll probably continue to let DPBA breathe for at least the next few months, we should not expect for NAV’s next offering to come in the very near future. Seeing as he is still locked in making music, though, it would be fair to expect the same level of greatness from NAV that we heard on his recent studio album.
Check out NAV’s full interview with Ebro here!
