Mavi Phoenix

Emerging from Austria, Mavi Phoenix fuses pop, rap, and R&B into an infectious yet difficult-to-pin-down sound. Born Marlene Nader into a family of Syrian descent—her grandfather arrived in Vienna during the 1970s as a refugee—the rapper-singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist spent her early years at English-speaking schools while absorbing rock bands including David Bowie and Queens of the Stone Age. At age 11 she took up guitar and began self-producing tracks in GarageBand once her father supplied an older MacBook. Her listening habits later expanded to encompass Kanye West and Drake alongside Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga; Nader adopted the stage name Mavi Phoenix both to honor actor River Phoenix and to evoke the idea of renewal. Phoenix claimed victory at the Austrian music contest Lautstark in 2013, then issued her first EP, My Fault, the following year, highlighted by the single “Green Queen.” Although she enrolled in political science studies in 2015, she still put out the M.P. collaboration “Little by Little” that same year. She delivered “Quiet” in 2016 as the opening cut of her 2017 EP Young Prophet, which also generated the singles “Love Longtime,” “Fly,” and “Aventura.”