There are few artists as difficult to write about as Busdriver. He’s built his career by constantly challenging preconceived notions of what hip hop should sound like and how an emcee should act on stage and deliver rhymes. When he’s at his best, such as his work with producers Nobody or Boom Bip on RoadKillOvercoat, he’s creates hip hop that’s weird and challenging, yet still has a pop sensibility. Teaming up with Belgian producer Loden for his latest album, Beaus$Eros, he once again delivers a record that immediately appeals to the ears. It’s so dense and complex, though, I feel confident in saying that by the time you read this review, I still won’t fully comprehend it.

Beaus$Eros comes out of a period of time in which Busdriver found himself facing some unexpected changes in his career. He was dropped by his former label and his booking agent and deejay both left him for various reasons. I’m sure this is not where he expected to find himself more than ten years into his recording career. His last two records were his strongest and best received. Why would anyone want to jump ship now? Well, I don’t know any of these people personally, so I can’t speculate as to their reasons, but I do know that Loden stuck with him as a creative partner and helped Busdriver channel these frustrations into his music. While one label might have been scared off by the direction his music was heading (seriously, though, it’s not like Busdriver’s music has ever been “normal”), Fake Four was no dummy, and they gladly gave him a home. I can’t imagine it was a hard decision, either. One listen to Beaus$Eros and it was abundantly clear to me that not only is this unlike any other hip hop album out right now, it’s also incredibly focused. It’s his best release to date, and that’s saying something. This claim had previously belonged to RoadKillOvercoat, one of my favorite hip hop albums of all time. The real magic comes from the chemistry between Busdriver and Loden. Both have made interesting music before this album, but together they managed to create an entirely new sound. It’s not a complete divorce from previous styles, but they certainly pushed each other out of their comfort zones to create something unique. It’s a fantastic swirl of glitch hop, ambient electronic, no wave, twee pop, DFA-esque dance music, and the new school West Coast hip hop that Busdriver cut his teeth on earlier in his career.

Busdriver continues to work as one of the densest lyricist recording today. There are heavy doses of irony, sacrasm, and absurd imagery. If you get distracted or caught up on one line, you’re probably going to miss the next. It’s easy to catch a phrase you missed the time before and then wonder, “What did he mean by that?” Just a quick glance a song titles like “NoBlacksNoJewsNoAsians,” “Picking Band Names,” “Ass to Mouth,” and “Swandive into a Drinking Glass” should be enough to clue you in that Beaus$Eros isn’t taking on your typical hip hop subject matter. If it does, you can be sure it’s not being dealt with in a typical way. In the intro to “Here’s to Us,” he begins by stating “I got the twenty-something rap guy anthem right here in my hands, y’all. Check it out. This one’s for you, young buck. Or old buck. Or middle-aged buck…Whatever.” It’s a song that’s half self-deprecating and half taking the hip hop industry to task. One of the most interesting songs on the album is “Bon Bon Fire.”” It moves back and forth between sounding cute and fun to intense and dissonant, while Busdriver lays into the music industry and those that validate themselves by their participation in it. It’s also a song with incredible energy and takes more twists and turns than you’d normally expect from a four minute hip hop song. I can only imagine how well it goes over live. “NoBlacksNoJewsNoAsians” is a short, intense song that counts down lines from twenty five, with a recitation of the title separating each line, and a lot of seemingly random and abstract lines coming together to form a dystopic image of capitalism and racism. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

If you’re looking for some classic, straight ahead hip hop, don’t listen to Busdriver. If you want hip hop that pushes people’s comfort zones because it’s weird and doesn’t fit into a box, Busdriver is for you. Beaus$Eros is a wild roller coaster of an album, taking you on all sorts of unexpected twists and turns. I’ve been listening to it for several days straight, and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve gone through it. I haven’t gotten tired of it, and I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything that’s happening in the course of these fourteen songs. To think that somebody was afraid of what Busdriver was doing with Loden on this album is ludicrous. Whoever that was, you fucked up. This album is brilliant.