Album Review: MALIK by Venna
Venna’s life is a journey, being the youngest voice in nearly every room he enters. MALIK is a record of bridges: between youth and age, home and voyage, jazz and everything that’s come after.
You can’t engage honestly with MALIK without first acknowledging this journey. For Venna, whose real name is Malik Venner, the past few years have been transformative. He has hustled backstage, riding tour buses through America, Australia, Asia, and Europe, recording sax lines for Burna Boy’s Grammy-winning “Twice as Tall” and sideman arrangements for Beyoncé, Kali Uchis, Wizkid, and London’s own Knucks. Yet, as he’s crisscrossed the globe, he’s almost always been the kid at the table, the one absorbing stories from musicians twice his age, bracing himself in the in-between spaces of airports and hotels, tuning his instrument as much for self-assurance as for performance. This inferiority, or at least the felt perception of being an apprentice among giants, breeds a peculiar blend of humility, aspiration, and boldness that pushes him musically. As he’s been quick to admit, there’s a kind of nervy “ego release” required to thrive in those rooms. It means holding space for ideas, not dominating, and cultivating the capacity for collaboration that is the beating heart of the albu.
You can hear how the past three years—every conversation, every guitar lick overheard, every weary-eyed glance out of a van window—has been metabolized into sound. MALIK isn’t a parade of genre exercises but a fabric where memory and emotion braid together, refusing easy classification. Venna’s creative process is almost synesthetic: he’ll catch a particular guitar tone in a São Paulo bar one night, a snatch of melody in Tokyo, and bring it back, letting it linger until it percolates through his London consciousness. It’s in the details—subtle distortion lacing the background of “Mr Popular” alongside the charismatic Smino arriving with a verse that bends against the beat, drifting in and out of the pocket, the muted bossa nova strum rippling through “São Paulo’ Interlude,” the languorous slide of an R&B groove on “Myself” with Jorja Smith riding over a lush bed of subtle inflections with her voice that’s sultry, resilient, and familiar. The album’s sonic palette is truly plural, yet its patchwork is seamless, the connective tissue being Venna’s sensibility and the empathetic, unhurried patience he brings to the producer’s chair.
The guitar work across the LP deserves special attention. There are places where the instrument feels like an expressive extension of the vocal line—recalling the spectral jazz-folk of Nick Drake or, more contemporaneously, the woozy minimalism of King Krule. On “My Way”, for example, the guitar is understated, a gently strummed lattice that supports Venna’s tentative, trembling falsetto. “Miles and miles away, but I’m here to stay/Girl, come my way” details not as a declaration but as an anxious, unresolved invitation. Venna’s voice is not that of a virtuoso singer but of an artist reaching, almost uncertainly, for emotional candor, letting the cracks and insecurities seep through. The shimmery, folk-tinged guitar here is not background; it’s co-conspirator, the sonic space where doubt and desire tangle and fail to resolve, leaving the song hovering somewhere between melancholy and gentle hope.
Venna’s relationship with the saxophone also marks MALIK as a project complete with thoughtful risk. For the past decade, the sax has often served as an ironic signifier—a nostalgic callback, or, at its worst, kitsch. Venna pushes past all that. His sax is neither ostentatious nor apologetic. Instead, it acts as a narrator, threading R&B motifs, bossa nova breeziness, and soft-rock sentimentality together with breath and intention. The album’s best sax moments aren’t virtuosic showpieces; they’re moments of deep listening, of giving and receiving, of improvisation that listens, supports, and bends. On “Twisting,” with Leon Thomas, the saxophone shivers amidst smoky, late-night R&B syncopations, emerging between vocal lines to accentuate longing rather than swamp it. “Twisting metals, twisting paper/Get away tonight/Can’t breathe while we fly”—Leon’s lyrics are restless and searching, bolstered by sax phrases that alternately dart and hover, reflecting the emotional volatility of new love and travel, of being unmoored and unwilling (or unable) to settle.
CARI’s vocals on “Veranda” are another highlight. There’s an ethereal, “magical melody” quality to her voice, which has made her a mainstay in electronic and trance scenes worldwide. “Day x2” featuring MIKE, meanwhile, is all haze: a lo-fi, jazz-inflected number that floats by like a vapor trail—“Day by day lessons learned/Rode my wave, live and love every day” is less a motivational cliché than a tired mantra you repeat when the world feels overwhelming. Venna’s musical lineage is sketched all over MALIK, but it’s never worn as a costume or empty callback. He is a child of jazz, mentored by the prodigiously gifted Yussef Dayes. This connection has deeply influenced his rhythmic inventiveness and love of improvisation, as evidenced by “Eternal Reflections.” Venna’s roots in reggae, soul, and hip-hop, all filtered through the musical melting pot of south London, persist in the album’s deep sense of groove, its openness to percussion and off-kilter time signatures.
Equally, Venna’s years working behind the boards or on features for an ever-more impressive international clientele are not, here, badges of honor, but workshops—each helping shape his curatorial ear and his capacity for unobtrusive leadership. On Beyoncé’s projects, or with Burna Boy—where he contributed to the anthemic “Alarm Clock”—Venna was always the melodic element, the subtle colorist whose flourishes pulled together Athens and Lagos, New York and London. On MALIK, he retools these lessons, not aiming for pop maximalism but for intimate, world-building. Collaboration for Venna isn’t just a feature—it’s the album’s argument and proof. If you approach it seeking clear genre markers, you’ll grow frustrated, but if you submit—just as Venna hopes—to the immersive, multi-sensory invitation he offers, you’ll find music that feels like it’s documenting a life in motion (“Numero Uno,” “Alchemy,” “Indigo”), not hedged, not cynical, but wide open and brimming with possibility. It’s the product of an artist who has listened far more than he’s preached and who, with his debut, charts out a space that feels, at last, like home.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Day x2,” “Mr Popular,” “Indigo”