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Heistheartist (pronounced He Is The Artist)’s first EP The Book of Mary is quite the introductory statement for his impending career. At first glance, listeners will undoubtedly notice the unique decision within making his name a conglomerate of several words, but it’s this unique approach that Heistheartist takes with him across his entire musical journey.
LeeMann Bassey is the man behind the name, and to fully crack The Book of Mary, it’s crucial to first unlock the man behind the curtain. Hailing from Central Islip, New York, Bassey began his musical career as a soul singer that focused entirely on secular music. He soon pivoted to functioning entirely as a faith-based musician but the genres explored as Heistheartist would be anything but contained.
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The EP explores a wide variety of sounds within its short six tracks, and this feat is made all the more impressive as two of the six functions as remixes of the EP’s presumed lead single “Childish.” The project begins with the song “Virgin,” which is a noteworthy start with a funky bass that dances against an extremely infectious drum loop as Bassey softly sings. The compelling lyrics discuss the struggles a Catholic Nun faces upon taking a vow of abstinence while sex and temptation still run rampant in modern society. “If I Were A Virgin Again” takes the stance of regret towards past misdeeds with the angle that you can be reborn upon learning from such mistakes. “If I were a Virgin again, I would fly high, higher than I ever could. Take me higher, oh Lord.” The third track “What Did I Do?” starts as an introspective voice memo in its production, but quickly pivots when a grand hip-hop drum track tears into the scene. The song feels almost like an interlude as the lyrics are just the title repeated across the song’s entire runtime, but it helps listeners feel led to the grand statement of the EP with the fourth track “Childish” coming next.
“Childish” immediately comes out swinging, and triples down on its mere existence in the form of not one but two remixes, with the first focusing on Afrobeats production and the second being a DanceHall iteration. “They want to know why I’m childish, can’t be street in the middle of the week, but on the weekend I’m a thug I said – I’m childish.” The song functions entirely as an anomaly on the otherwise fairly typical gospel project, not offering much in the obvious way of noticeably faith-based lyrics or composition, but it appropriately closes out the EP and offers a taste of what Heistheartist is capable of in a variety of different genres and sounds.
The Book of Mary is a successfully constructed first piece of the larger mosaic that will one day fully resemble Heistheartist’s musical career. LeeMann Bassey has an enjoyably experimental project on his hands and has flaunted the ability to bend genres and spread the gospel that much further. The future is never certain, but the concept of Heistheartist feels distinctly devout and confident within itself and its place in the universe.
by Patrick Orr
