Venna’s Debut Album, ‘MALIK’ Immerses Listeners not in Definable Style, but in Amorphous Mellow
Evan Dale | December 9, 2025
Venna hails from the UK, but MALIK takes a little bit from everywhere. For the London based saxophonist and producer – who triples as a vocalist on his debut album – the word debut feels a little misplaced. At 26, he’s spent three years touring, released two EP’s prior – 2021’s Venology and 2023’s EQUINOX – and has already won one Grammy. The self-titled MALIK is technically Venna’s debut album, but it’s far from his introduction. Instead, the 17-track project that weaves in rappers, vocalists, and fellow instrumentalists is an exhibition into the sonic breadth he’s been establishing since the beginning, reenforcing it here with a stylistically indefinable mosaic of musical meandering that still somehow never loses its direction.
Don’t get it twisted: that direction is not jazz. As many contemporary, improvisation-laden instrumentalists would tell you, nothing about what jazz is supposed to be is actually so easily defined. Rather, MALIK – like so many projects from so many of Venna’s contemporaries – is a projection of the protagonist’s complex self through a doorway that though begins at the narrow neck of a saxophone, expands and kaleidoscopes into an immersive bevel of storytelling by way of brass, bars, vocals, and a whole lot of further instrumentation.
In order of appearance, Jorja Smith, MIKE, Marco Bernardis, Leon Thomas, Smino, CARI, and Yussef Dayes sew their own textures into Venna’s quilt.
In order of the album, MALIK opens with the aptly titled Numero Uno – a sensual, slow layering of analogue, live-recorded drum, bass, and guitar, with a mostly-steady, but always slightly varied saxophone run leading the way. The formula will blueprint much of the next near hour, but it will never become predictable.
From the moment Jorja Smith wraps her vocals in and out of Myself’s sensitive guitar chords and compassionate sax, the track – and subsequently the project at large – gleams with emotion. But emotion is extremely broad. The word is treacherously vague for a writer. For Venna, however, it’s the kind of width his many sounds require. Throughout MALIK, he evokes an awful lot of emotions in his listeners.
Through Prophet and +Star101, compositions capture the essence of rain. The pitter patter of quickened drums lay the foundation for both tracks. The repeatability of echoey guitar riffs keeps the ship steady. Intermittent, ghostly vocals prove mysterious, and with his sax, Venna wildly explores the boundlessness of his sonic space, imbibing each unpredictable turn.
By the time MIKE finds his way to MALIK for Day x2, everything slows down towards the methodic, intentional flow of the New Jersey rapper. To no surprise, Venna’s malleability plays well here, too. Able to flex in and out from his own quick, instrumentally driven pace to the slow-and-steady stride of MIKE would cause a lot of other artists a challenge with their own flexibility. For Venna, MIKE’s spoon-fed cadence is an opportunity.
That same opportunity presents itself at Twisting in the form of Leon Thomas’s rolling, emotive R&B. An understated, emotionally downtrodden foundation allows the ethereal New York crooner the space to expand on contract his expressive bellows in response to Venna’s floaty notes.
Just two tracks later, at Mr. Popular, Venna crafts a beat and shapes his saxophone for one of the most quickly cadenced lyricists of his generation. In verse, Smino unpredictably traverses any production with bars that constantly shift their pace, ultimately shapeshifting in and out of the rapped, the sung, and the grey areas in between. Here, Venna and his entire composition continue to find their footing, finding opportunities to make something ultimately unique in response to a guest artist that can be defined with the same expression.
In its many features, MALIK navigates incomprehensible breadth, tethered throughout to Venna’s instrumental fluidity. In his many influences, Venna’s auditory signature widens, laying down beats and weaving in a myriad of stylistic nuance to craft a sound that can’t even come close to being boxed in by any existing means of genre definition. In its nuance, MALIK feels vast and varied, but so very true to the id central to Venna’s artistry. You know it’s him while listening, even if you can’t pinpoint why.
At the downtempo immersion of My Way, you know MALIK is a masterpiece – a profound projection of an artist into their music over the course of an hour.