Cracka Don is an emcee from the hip hop hot bed of Waterloo, Iowa. While most people might not be checking for Iowa hip hop, all that matters right now is that Coolzey is, and now he’s helped take a guy who’s made plenty of bedroom recordings and played around the area for years, and he’s given him a platform with Public School Records to release his first studio album, Dinosaur.

As you make your way through Dinosaur, you’ll start to see why this guy has been an underground cult of personality for years. He’s got this sarcastic, off-kilter flow, and his sense of humor is definitely the driving force behind the album. However, there is something to his sense of irony and the way he’s kind of rapping but not rapping that might make it seem like he’s not taking any of this seriously. Once you get a few songs under your belt and you start paying attention a little bit more, though, you realize that there’s a lot of substance bubbling just below the surface. I mean, literally half way through the album, you get a song called “Introspection,” which delivers exactly what it promises. Over the course of the album, we get a mix of production from No Relation, Jizzabeats, Dr. Wow!, E Knowledge, Imperfekt, Joel Anderson, Mike Renaud, DJ Dopepipe, and St. Charles, who give a range of beats that range from indie-rock influenced to old school hip hop, but they all have this lo-fi aesthetic tying them all together. It’s the type of album that will sound great late at night on your local college radio station.

Cracka Don is different personality and style than most of the hip hop you’ll hear this year, but you’ll also get why this guy has been a local favorite for years. Dinosaur is fun and silly, but it’s also got plenty of depth hiding right behind all of the jokes.