''Demons Protected by Angels'' is the fourth studio album by Canadian rapper Nav. It was released through XO and

Republic Records Republic Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group (UMG). Based in New York City, it was founded by Avery Lipman and Monte Lipman as an independent label in 1995, and was acquired by UMG in 2000. Republic was initially ...

on September 9, 2022. The album contains guest appearances from

Lil Uzi Vert Symere Bysil Woods ( ; born July 31, 1995), known professionally as Lil Uzi Vert, is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, they gained initial recognition following the release of the commer ...

Lil Baby Dominique Armani Jones (born December 3, 1994), known professionally as Lil Baby, is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. He rose to prominence following the release of his 2017 mixtapes ''Harder than Hard'' and ''Too Hard'' — the for ...

Travis Scott Jacques Bermon Webster III (born April 30, 1991), known professionally as Travis Scott (formerly stylized as Travi$ Scott), is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, and record producer. Scott has had five number-one hits on the U.S. ''Bil ...

Don Toliver Caleb Zackery "Don" Toliver ( ; born June 12, 1994) is an American rapper and singer. He emerged to fame in 2018 with the release of his debut mixtape, ''Donny Womack'', and his feature on the song "Can't Say" by fellow Houston rapper Travis Sco ...

Future The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently ex ...

, Gunna,

Lil Durk Durk Derrick Banks (born October 19, 1992), known professionally as Lil Durk, is an American rapper. Regarded as a pioneering artist in the Chicago-based hip-hop subgenre drill music, he is often considered the subgenre's most commercially suc ...

, RealestK,

Bryson Tiller Bryson Djuan Tiller (born January 2, 1993) is an American singer, rapper, and songwriter. He began his career in 2011 with his debut mixtape, ''Killer Instinct Vol. 1''. He gained mainstream recognition following the release of his 2015 single ...

, and

Babyface Ray Marcellus Rayvon Register (born February 7, 1991), known professionally as Babyface Ray, is an American rapper. He is a prominent figure in 2020s Detroit hip hop. Early life Born February 7, 1991, in Detroit, Ray played basketball and footbal ...

. The bonus version was released on September 14, 2022. It includes an additional guest appearance from

Internet Money Internet Money Records, often credited as Internet Money, is an American record label and record producer collective. It was founded in 2015 by American record producer Taz Taylor, who is the chief executive officer (CEO). The producer collect ...

for the previously-released 2020 single, "

Lemonade Lemonade is a sweetened lemon-flavored drink. There are many varieties of lemonade found throughout the world. In some parts of the world, lemonade refers to an un-carbonated, traditionally, homemade drink, using lemon juice, water, and a sw ...

", their collaboration alongside Gunna and Don Toliver, which features Nav. Production on the album was handled by Nav himself,

Tay Keith Brytavious Lakeith Chambers, known professionally as Tay Keith, is an American record producer. He is best known for co-producing Travis Scott's 2018 single "Sicko Mode", which peaked atop the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, as well as Drake's " Nonsto ...

Boi-1da Matthew Jehu Samuels (born October 12, 1986), known professionally as Boi-1da (a play on Boy Wonder) is a Canadian record producer and songwriter based in Toronto, Ontario. He is an in-house producer for Drake's OVO Sound label and has prod ...

, Money Musik, Pro Logic, Grayson, Mike Dean, and

Wheezy Wesley Tyler Glass (born October 26, 1992), known professionally as Wheezy, is an American record producer and songwriter. Recognized by his producer tag "Wheezy Outta Here!" (uttered by frequent collaborator Future), he has been credited on com ...

, among others. The album was nominated for Album of the Year and Rap Album/EP of the Year, and "Wrong Decisions" for Rap Single of the Year, at the

Juno Awards of 2023 The Juno Awards of 2023 was a music awards ceremony that was held on 13 March 2023 at Rogers Place in Edmonton, Alberta.Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

to announce the title of the album and shared a screenshot of the tweet on social media. On July 29, 2022, he released the lead single, " Never Sleep", a collaboration with American rapper

, which features fellow American rapper and singer

. The same day the song was released, he was interviewed by ''

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'', in which he spoke about the album and how it was named:

The album title was inspired by a sweater that my friend had made. And I've begged him to get the sweater. I was like, "Yo, I wanna wear your shit and support my friend's stuff." So he brought it out and it had that on the back of the sweater. And it was very meaningful to me, because he came up with that himself when his mom passed away about a year ago. So I was like, "Wow, that's even better." Like, it actually has a good meeting . So that's why we came up with it. ..Someone close to me had pointed my eyes toward the sweater. They're like, "Oh, that's fire, can you make an album called that?" But the whole quote on this sweater was "fighting demons protected by angels." We thought it was too long. Then one of my producers had mentioned, "Maybe we should take the 'fighting' out." We thought about it, and called our friends to ask them their opinion. We all said it's kind of dope. Then one day we were playing dominoes in the studio, and I just randomly asked him, 'How'd you come up with that?' He found that on
Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
, and then he told me where it's from. It was even more meaningful.

On August 23, 2022, Nav released the second single of the album, "Wrong Decisions". Exactly one week later, he revealed the release date, along with a trailer video that revealed the guest artists, which did not include American rapper Gunna on the list at the time. On September 5, 2022, Nav shared the cover art for the album. He revealed the tracklist in collaboration with

Spotify Spotify (; ) is a List of companies of Sweden, Swedish Music streaming service, audio streaming and media service provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. , it is one of the largest providers of music streaming services ...

hip hop Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hip- ...

playlist RapCaviar the following day. On September 8, 2022, the day before the album was released, Nav was interviewed by Canadian-American YouTube channel Nelk's Full Send Podcast, in which he revealed that he recorded a song with fellow Canadian rapper and singer

Drake Drake may refer to: Animals and creatures * A male duck * Drake (mythology), a term related to and often synonymous with dragon People and fictional characters * Drake (surname), a list of people and fictional characters with the family ...

, but he decided to not include it on the album because he felt that they "could've done a better song and the timeframe was just not good" and along with the latter is "such a big artist" that he did not want the song to "take away from anything else on the album". On September 13, 2022, " One Time", a collaboration with American rapper and singer

, which features fellow American rapper

, was released as the third and final single of the album.

Critical reception

''Demons Protected by Angels'' was met with generally mixed reviews. At

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which assigns a

normalized Normalization or normalisation refers to a process that makes something more normal or regular. Science * Normalization process theory, a sociological theory of the implementation of new technologies or innovations * Normalization model, used in ...

rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an

average In colloquial, ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data. The type of average taken as most typically representative of a list of numbers is the arithmetic mean the sum of the numbers divided by ...

score of 59 based on 4 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Writing for ''

Pitchfork A pitchfork or hay fork is an agricultural tool used to pitch loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. It has a long handle and usually two to five thin tines designed to efficiently move such materials. The term is also applie ...

'', Matthew Ritchie felt that Nav "attempts to shift focus away from the beats and features, finally treating the songs like they're his own" and "Nav lets extended moments of true self-awareness break through his manicured shell, momentarily deviating from the soulless bars that often fill his albums", but conversely added that "ceding too much room to guests undermines Nav's individuality and causes the star-powered tracks to veer toward the generic".

Accolades

Commercial performance

''Demons Protected by Angels'' debuted at number two on the US ''Billboard'' 200 chart, earning 67,000

album-equivalent unit The album-equivalent unit, or album equivalent, often shortened to just unit, is a sales metric in the music industry that defines the number of streaming media, songs streamed and music download, songs downloaded equal to one Record sales, tradi ...

s, of which 26,000 were in pure album sales in its first week. It serves as Nav's fifth consecutive top-ten album in the country. The album also accumulated a total of 60.13 million on-demand streams of the album's songs during the tracking week.

Track listing

Notes * signifies a co- producer

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

References

{{Nav 2022 albums Nav (rapper) albums Republic Records albums Albums produced by Nav (rapper) Albums produced by Boi-1da Albums produced by Mike Dean (record producer) Albums produced by Tay Keith Albums produced by Wheezy XO (record label) albums