Rapper redveil rebuilt his beats for a live band at the Tiny Desk

redveil played the Tiny Desk on 9 July 2026 and NPR called it a homecoming. The rapper and producer grew up in Prince George's County, Maryland, a short drive from the office the series is filmed in, and moved to Los Angeles a couple of years ago. For this set he pulled his dense production apart and handed it to a live band.

The material came mostly from sankofa, released in late 2025. The title is an Akan word from Ghana meaning go back and get it, the idea being that you carry wisdom forward from what came before. NPR read the whole performance through that frame.

He opened with time (a dream deferred), a song about his own mortality, then lone star, on which he was joined by Carolyn Malachi and which looks back at summers spent in Texas with his grandparents. history reaches for his Caribbean roots and runs straight into brown sugar, a light love song.

Near the end he went back to campbell, the first track on niagra, the album he put out in 2020 at the age of 16. The set closed with glimpse of you, redveil at the keys, a letter to his brother, who lives with schizophrenia. The song builds to a climax and ends on hope rather than grief.

The band was Fred Greene on keys, Emmanuel Oke on guitar, Imran Musa on bass and Keith Butler Jr on drums, with Malachi and redveil sharing vocals. Joshua Bryant produced the session for NPR.

Other Tiny Desk sets we have covered include Vince Staples with a young band and Armand Hammer with an ensemble assembled by Kenny Segal. The rest of our rap coverage is on the hip-hop hub.