Piñata Review

On paper it is a mismatch: a producer known for abstract loop collages and a rapper who came up on hard nosed Midwest street records. In practice each fixes the other's weakness. The beats are dusty and slightly off kilter, full of vinyl noise and abrupt switches mid song, and they give the writing space that a conventional street rap producer would have filled with menace. Gibbs answers with specificity.

Deeper is a full relationship autopsy delivered in one unbroken verse. Thuggin is the mission statement. Real is a warning to a former mentor with a chill running under it. The title track gathers half the underground and Gibbs still leaves last. What makes it endure is texture. Sixty two minutes of crackle and warmth means it plays as a record rather than a collection, and the violence in the writing lands harder because the music refuses to dramatise it. He has made albums as sharp and none as complete.