andrew is an artist from Philadelphia who is relatively new to the scene, only starting to release music in 2019. Since that time, though, he’s caught a lot of different peoples’ ears, working with labels like Cold Rhymes, Three Dollar Pistol, and UDDTBA, and Fused Arrow, and making full-length albums with the likes of Zilla Rocca, Jesse the Tree, and steel tipped dove. Showing absolutely no signs of slowing down, he now teams up with New Jersey producer Pagez to make a new EP, Smoke Chain.

The thing about andrew is not that he came out of nowhere with some crazy style or anything like that, it’s more that he seemed to come out of nowhere with ten years of writing and performing under his belt. When you listen to a project like Smoke Chain, it’s not necessarily one big single that’s going to win you over, it’s all the little things that add up and keep rewarding over time. Pagez is throwing down some great East Coast boom bap, and then andrew is stepping to the mic with his gruff voice and conversational flow, and you just get sucked in by how natural everything feels. These two artists have great chemistry together, and they clearly feed off of each other’s energy. They also both have a knack for paying attention to details that may or may not get noticed, but subtly shift a project like this from decent to really good and immediately enjoyable. Pagez does a great job of flipping some interesting samples, and then he also does a great job of mixing in some poignant vocal clips at just the right moment to add that extra punch to a track. In terms of subject matter, andrew is moving from classic shit talk to religion to hip hop culture to his own personal life with ease, and he’s just packing his lines with clever wordplay, interesting observations, emotional moments, and punchlines, which in turn give you a really well-rounded listening experience over the course of seven tracks.

Smoke Chain is yet another solid project from andrew. He finds yet another creative partner in Pagez whom he works well with, and the two just put on a clinic over the course of this EP.