AJ Suede is an emcee from Seattle who started releasing music in the mid-2010s. At the beginning of this year, he had a bit of a breakout moment when he made his debut on Fake Four by teaming up with producer Televangel to release the album Metatron’s Cube. Not wasting anytime to follow that up, he’s now teamed up with Philly producer Small Professor to release another full-length album, Hundred Year Darkness.

Sometimes when emcees and producers team up, it can feel very plug and play, like “Yeah, that sounds like emcee X rhyming over beats by producer Y,” but it doesn’t necessarily sound like they worked on anything unique together. It’s not always bad, but sometimes that predictability can leave you wanting. In the case of Hundred Year Darkness, I was pleasantly surprised at how distinct the sound was for this album - like Small Pro had been waiting for the right emcee to come along to be like, “These jazzy and soulful boom bap beats are cool, but where’s your weird shit?” Well, AJ Suede is clearly that emcee, because this album sounds like it’s beaming in from outer space. Small Pro is coming with the free jazz and the sci-fi-esque experimental electronic music and spacing it out at this really methodical pace. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t any interesting rhythmic interplay, though, because he’s squeezing all sorts of interesting and subtle moments in between the big, heavy hits that help to anchor all of these challenging sounds. On the mic, AJ Suede is just feeding off of this energy and delivering a combination of trash talk, political rhymes, philosophical rhymes, and deeply personal rhymes. Because he’s matching the deliberate pacing of the beats on the mic and rapping very clearly to be heard over all of these wild beats, your instinct might let you think that he’s not saying all that much, that his rhymes are basic or not all that creative. This couldn’t be further from the truth, however, because once you get a little ways into the album, you’ll catch a line that’s especially clever and loaded with layered meanings, and you’ll wonder how you got there, only to then turn around and hear Suede opening up and revealing some of his most personal thoughts and feelings. Now you’re halfway through the album and you need to pause and catch up with all that’s been said already. It’s an album that is so densely packed, both musically and lyrically, you’ll discover something new each time through.

A lot of artists would have been content to release an album like Metatron’s Cube and then just rest on their laurels for a moment. Not AJ Suede, though. After putting in the work on that album, he’s given us a completely different look by teaming up with Small Professor and delivered a new album in Hundred Year Darkness that is every bit as challenging and rewarding.