TchiTchi’s New Album Is the Most Honest Thing He’s Made

There’s a moment on almost every great album where you can hear the artist stop performing and just exist. On Non Est Ad Astra Mollis e Terris Via, TchiTchi finds that moment more than once. The record is sprawling in its influences — Afrobeat, electronic, melodic rap, lyrics that drift between French, Spanish, Portuguese, and English — but it never sounds like a man trying to prove something. It sounds like a man making music he actually wants to hear. That distinction matters more than people give it credit for.

The highlights are the personal ones. “Irmaos” is a bruising, clear-eyed look at what it means to grow up with brothers who push back on you. “Josephine,” written for his sister and built on the bones of Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Diana,” is the rare tribute song that earns its sentiment through understatement rather than overselling it. These tracks work because TchiTchi isn’t reaching for profundity — he’s just telling the truth about people he loves, and the production is good enough to hold it.

He’s called music a hobby. Spend enough time with this album and that starts to seem less like modesty and more like the whole secret. There’s no desperation here, no chasing, no sense that the record needs to be anything other than what it is. Non Est Ad Astra Mollis e Terris Via translates roughly to “there’s no easy road to the stars.” TchiTchi seems unbothered by that. He’s just enjoying the climb.