Haviah Mighty looks inward on her personal new album Crying Crystals
The Toronto-based rapper returns with her most candid record yet
On her latest album, Crying Crystals, Haviah Mighty ventures out of her comfort zone, looking inward for inspiration. The record is an exploration of her personal struggles and relationships that incorporates inventive wordplay and a blend of music genres.
"This project is much more internal and [about] my perception of my world," Mighty says in an interview with Q guest host Talia Schlanger.
"It becomes much more nerve-wracking what people's opinions would be on those thoughts of mine because they're so personal, as opposed to this outer viewpoint. It's just more vulnerable, more raw, and it feels like it's like the layer beneath your skin that people are able to see."
In 2019, Mighty's first studio album, 13th Floor, won the Polaris Music Prize, receiving praise for its commentary on institutional racism and social injustice. Her 2021 EP Stock Exchange similarly won a Juno Award in 2022.
As an artist who's used to smashing expectations and doing things her own way, Crying Crystals is a continuation of Mighty's musical evolution. She says she pushes herself to make music that represents her complex identity and shows a peek of who she is beneath the surface.
Her hard-hitting break up track Honey Bun is about getting over an ex by displaying a confident and unbothered facade — even if it's a lie.
"[It's] kind of the braggadocious face of the album — the flawed confidence, the I'm over it, pretend I'm over it," she says of the song. "But I needed that to actually get to the place of being over it, because then I had to learn how I was filling voids and I had to recognize how I was not actually healed."
Intertwining personal anecdotes with catchy Caribbean and R&B influences sets Mighty's latest album apart. "I started rapping when I was 12 and I feel like my early exposure to rap was battle rap era," she says. "So having those different cadences and having different flows kind of morph in and out was, I think, my original style. And I think I've maintained that through my process of writing."
Crying Crystals represents a fuller picture of who Mighty is as a Black queer woman.
"I try to represent that because I do actually understand both sides," she tells Schlanger "I am Jamaican-Canadian, and I am queer, and I understand what it means to be both — and they do coexist. All of that lives within me, so Crying Crystals is a way to showcase that."
The full interview with Haviah Mighty is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Written by Mofe Adeniran. Interview with Haviah Mighty produced by Vanessa Nigro.
For more stories about the 50th anniversary of hip-hop — including Tom Power's conversations with some of the artists who witnessed and shaped the genre — check out Hip-Hop at 50 here.
