Marvin Dolo is always two things: enigmatic and prolific. The underground king of electronically experimental R&B and hip-hop, his string of six projects (two a year) between 2017 and 2019 has left him defined by the widest of vocal and compositional ranges. With each project, he unearths a new swatch of skills; with each project, his sound is delineated by the exploration of a new auditory aesthetic. Walking a carefully curated grey area between R&B, hip-hop, and the ever-presence of electronica in production, his projects – as different as they may be – are always tethered akin by a certain texture that is purely his no matter the direction he is traveling. 

 

Starting off 2020 right where his listeners expect him too, the mysterious Marvin Dolo is here with Doli. At 11 tracks in length, it’s a standard collection for Dolo to do something new yet again. And Doli. doesn’t fail in its effort to do exactly that. 

 

Doli. is bass-heavy, high-fidelity, and characterized by a Marvin Dolo less romantically inclined than his last project, Sweet Nothings, or its predecessor One of Two Ways. Instead, our protagonist indulges in a hip-hop heavy bout of braggadocio bookended to its heavy side by the anthemic intensity of Wannaberich and to its mellow side by PARTYNEXTDOOR-reminiscent Juicy. It is a hip-hop-adjacent exploration of harmony and rhythm, still defined by a vocally dominant artist, but in a way less sing-songy than his recent work. It does, however, conjure memories of his 2018 Crctr Dfcts EP that included up-turnt, melodic hip-hop bangers like 6th Gear and Way Up. 

 

In that way, Doli is another telling and necessary addition to the canon of one of music’s hardest working, most underrated transcendentalists: Marvin Dolo.