Collaborative album
Voir Dire
pairs
The Alchemist
's soul-sampling, mellow roasted production with
Earl Sweatshirt
's lucid dreaming flows, an unlikely but surprisingly complementary match.
Earl
's 2018 album
Some Rap Songs
changed certain sectors of hip hop forever with its fragmented production and fever dream rhymes, pioneering a sound that didn't quite fit into lofi circles but was more alien than almost any other album that made it to the top 20 of that year's Billboard charts. His work since has been just as experimental if not more, so it's almost a shock to hear him on
Alchemist
's relatively tame beats like "Mac Deuce" or the synthy R&B loop of "Heat Check." If anything,
proves that
can shine in any context, bringing an inventive, circuitous diagram of rhymes to
's deep-groove riffs on "Vin Skully" and transforming the straightforward gospel pianos and bumpy drums of "Mancala" (one of two tracks on the project featuring
Vince Staples
) into something puzzlingly cerebral.
MIKE
brings out even more of
's cryptographic rap tendencies when they duet with head-spinning bars on "Sentry."
pushes the bounds of both
's old school warmth and
's heady verses, landing someplace new that neither would have gotten to on their own. ~ Fred Thomas