Black Plastique is a producer/emcee from Birmingham that had quite a busy 2020, which saw him launch a new label, Ego Def LLC and debut a new group, theSportingLife. He’s keeping that energy up as he starts off 2021 with a new EP that features him as a producer, Automatic Jazz.

The concept of Automatic Jazz is that Black Plastique is collecting a few instrumentals along with a couple of collaborative tracks. As the EP opens with “Still,” featuring Richard Daniel, we get some of Plastique’s smoothest R&B-inspired hip hop, not that far off from what he was doing with theSportingLife. We are also reminded that Richard Daniel is one of the dopest talents in the Magic City as he moves so smoothly between these stream-of-consciousness rhymes and some beautiful sung hooks, all of which will require multiple listens to catch everything he’s throwing down. As you make your way through the EP, the music will slowly evolve or devolve, depending on the way you look at things. The second track with B.Tru, “High Demand,” is a natural continuation from Richard Daniel, where Tru and Plastique do a little shit talking over a smooth beat, but by the time we check in with Mel.Crozby on the fourth track, “I Want to go Home,” things have gotten a bit more darker and abstract, with Crozby delivering more a spoken word piece that straight up rapping as Plastique’s beats start to get a bit harsher and more dissonant. This leads into “Elimination,” which has us fully into a dystopian industrial soundscape, which carries us through the next to tracks to the end of the EP. While this all happens rather quickly by the clock, with seven total tracks coming in around sixteen minutes, everything is so well done and expertly sequenced, the whole things feels like a pretty natural progression.

Automatic Jazz starts off as one thing and end up something completely different after a quick journey, but Black Plastique is so careful to connect the dots and put the music in conversation and he shifts gears, you might not even realize how much the landscape has changed until you go back to the beginning. That takes a lot of skill and attention to detail.