Five years ago, Philly-by-way-of-New-York emcee Curly Castro hit the scene in a major way when he dropped his solo album, Fidel. Since that time, we’ve gotten some different collaborative projects. While those have been enjoyable, fans have still been patiently waiting for the proper follow-up solo album to Fidel. Now that wait is finally over as Castro now drops Tosh.

For Tosh, Castro seeks to bring together his heritage of the West Indies, Brooklyn, and Philly. To achieve this sound, he worked with producers ELUCID, Floodwatch, Messiah Musik, the Expert, Zilla Rocca, Blockhead, Small Professor, Uncommon Nasa, Dos4gw, Blueprint, and Willie Green. If that sounds like a lot of cooks in the kitchen, that’s because it is, and each one has a difficult task of bringing out a particular side of Castro. As an emcee, Castro is in a class of his own, with a distinctive low, gravely voice that booms on the mic, with a penchant for great storytelling, shit talking, and political discussion. This album is no different, in that we get Castro moving from relaying some of his own family lore to discussing the relevance of Animal Farm in 2018, to just talking some trash and delivering some clever punchlines. He’s a well-rounded emcee, and he brings his A-game to Tosh on the mic. The only problem with the album is that it’s almost too ambitious in its approach. Each individual track on the album is good, but in shifting between styles to represent Brooklyn, Philly, and the West Indies, it often feels like you’re shifting in between three different albums, instead of one that brings all the styles together. It’s not like one style is better than the others, either. There will be different stretches of the album where he’ll be rhyming over some dense underground NY beats, and I’ll think, “This is what he should be doing!” Then he’ll switch over to some dub-inspired beats, crush it, and I’ll think, “He should just make a dub album!” Then he’ll start in on some soulful Philly beats, and it’ll bring out another side of him, and then I’ll just get frustrated that the tracks feel just a little disconnected from each other. Each part works, they just don’t necessarily connect and flow in a way that makes the songs come together and talk to each other. I have to give Castro props for his ambition, but when you the bar as high as he did with Fidel, it’s tough when the next solo album is just really good, but not great, because I know he’s reached that level before. Hell, he’ll probably reach it again, but Tosh just feels a little bit scattered and disconnected.

Curly Castro is an extremely talented emcee and performer, and he’s given us an album in Tosh that sought to cover a lot of ground. While he did manage to give us a lot of great hip hop from a lot of different angles on this album, it just falls that tiny bit short of coming together in the way that great albums need to.