Clear Soul Forces is a group from Detroit that emerged in 2008, consisting of L.A.Z., Ilajide, Emile Vincent, and Noveliss, after a chance meeting with Royce Da 5’9. Since that time, the group hit the ground running, with a steady stream of albums, EPs, tours, and solo releases. After all this time, and juggling the careers of four different artists to keep everything together, the group has decided to call it quits with their final album, Forceswithyou.

Going into their final album, no one is trying to reinvent the group. They are here to give you ten solid tracks of what you’ve come to love about the group, and then peace out. Ilajide is handling the beats, with a couple of assists from Radio Galaxy, finding a way to connect their immediate past and surroundings of Slum Village and J Dilla to the weird West Coast underground of the ‘90s, such as Heiroglyphics or Freestyle Fellowship. And that’s really what Clear Soul Forces are doing in a broader sense as well when they all hop the mic, trading lines and dancing around your ears with abstract poetry and battle raps for days. It’s the type of album that immediately feels accessible and familiar, but it’s weird enough and filled with enough nuance that you can listen to it over and over and pick up on something new each time. Really, though, what hit me in listening to this album, and what I’m going to miss about Clear Soul Forces is that we don’t have enough actual groups in hip hop anymore. These aren’t four artists sending beats and verses through the internet to each other and cutting and pasting them together, it’s about having everyone in the same room, vibing with each other, feeding off the energy, adlibbing and trading lines. That’s the energy that we don’t get enough of any more these days.

Forceswithyou is a great note to go out on. It’s so good that fans will be begging for more, but we’ll have to let it go. I get it, it’s tough to get a group of artists on the same page and make a living these days, but dammit if this album isn’t just a lot of fun. It takes you back to a different era, also while sounding completely contemporary. That’s not easy to do.