Mavi grows hip-hop brand with an eye toward the future

KEN KOONTZ

Hip-hop artist Mavi, a West Charlotte High School graduate, unwinds with family fans and friends at Archive Coffee Shop after a Charlotte concert.

Mavi is rapidly becoming a top-tier name in music and entertainment.

Mavi, Omar Minder’s stage name, is a 25-year-old hip-hop artist, rapper and writer, has more than 2 million monthly listeners to an estimated 10,000 streams. He’s performed before sold-out audiences in Europe, including shows in Paris, London, Manchester, Brussels, Berlin, Lisbon and Dublin. He has rocked houses in North America, including Montreal and Toronto, Canada as well as Los Angeles to Seattle out west and Rhode Island to Florida on the East Coast.

In a recent interview, Mavi talked about his foray into the music industry and long-range ambitions beyond it. He developed an interest in music as a 14-year-old freshman in the West Charlotte High School marching band, where he played middle brass instruments. It was then and there that Mavi wrote his first song, “Sights and Sounds.” He said the tune “did pretty good with a few hundred listeners online.”

Mavi recounted his first-ever live performance at Rudean’s Bar and Grill on the corner of Beatties Ford Road and then-Keller Street when he was 14. “I really shouldn’t have been there at all,” he said. But he recalled, it was a good time that launched the beginning of what’s now a thriving music career.

“Man, it was wild,” he said.

Mavi’s family has South Carolina Lowcountry roots in Sumter and Hopkins.

“It wasn’t very easy for our family,” he said after a pause to think back on his grandfather and great-grandfather and their struggles in a deeply segregated Jim Crow period.

“They didn’t have a lot, and they worked doing regular, generational stuff. Their hard work paid off because it enabled me to be a dreamer. “Their background was music. They had a quartet, and my father was their producer. I grew up around that type of music environment.”

Mavi has been described by peers, colleagues and industry representatives as a prolific writer. He describes his work as “vulnerable” as it features stories and issues of sobriety, infidelity, heartbreak and struggles with fame and visibility.

“I think diverse crowds connect with me on personal levels through my music,” he said.

Mavi’s ultimate goal is not that of being a legendary rapper and writer with pictures plastered over music industry tabloids. He wants to earn a degree in biology and return home to teach at West Charlotte. He has one year left to finish that college degree. But, he says his primary focus is planting roots in his home community through a nonprofit organization.

“I’ve learned a lot in my short years,” he said. “I want to do my best in my music and have commercial success and get all the accolades. They are OK, but I want to have impact. I want to have a wife, family, children and I see that in my future.”

The Mavi persona and family love was demonstrated earlier this month when his mother and her friend surprised him to celebrate his 25th birthday with him on stage in Portland, Oregon.

“That really surprised me along with that big screen, specially orchestrated birthday greetings by his family and others back home in Charlotte,” he said. That specially prepared birthday video featured birthday greetings and well-wishes from family and friends topped with Stevie Wonders’ “The Wild Child.”

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