Fly Anakin is an artist from Richmond, Virginia who has been releasing music since 2014. Over the years, he’s worked with a lot of his fellow Mutant Academy artists like Ohbliv, Koncept Jack$on, and Big Kahuna OG. He made a bit of a splash in 2020 when he collaborated with Los Angeles artist Pink Siifu to make the album FlySiifu’s, which came out on Lex Records. Now he’s back with his first solo album on Lex, Frank.

Recorded at the same time as FlySiifu’s, Frank is a different album in several ways. One, this isn’t a concept album in the same way that FlySiifu’s is, it’s just a collection of songs that all fit together along with a few skits that are really just short clips of Anakin talking that help you get to know him better. To put the album together, Anakin got beats from Foisey, Psycho Sid, Evidence, Lastnamedavid, Ohbliv, DJ Harrison, Like, Madlib, EARDRUM, and Jay Versace, along with producing one track himself. While this is a lot of cooks in the kitchen, Anakin knew what he was looking for in terms of the overall sound of the album, so everything flows together nicely as you get a lot of really far left field downtempo tracks. Basically, the feeling across the album is that Anakin laid down the challenge of “How weird can you make a downtempo track while still feeling soulful?” To that end, Frank walks that line between weird and accessible pretty well. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have someone as skillful and charismatic on the mic as Anakin. Throughout the album, he’s coming at you with his high-yet-gruff voice, delivering flows that cleverly find a way to fit into these beats, even when the pocket isn’t all that obvious. He’s hitting you with a lot of stream-of-conscious raps, touching on everything from the philosophical to pop culture references to the mundane aspects of everyday life and everything in between. He can drop a solid hook when he needs to, and there are a few songs that will get stuck in head because of that, but the real joy is just sitting with the album and letting Fly Anakin take you on this ride. There are a lot of twists and turns and starts and stops, but it’s always interesting, and it’s always deeply personal. It’s such a packed and layered album, you’ll catch something new each time through it.

Frank is a great follow up to FlySiifu’s. It’s incredibly creative and inventive, but for all of it’s fascinating weirdness, it’s that personal touch that seeps through on each song as Fly Anakin raps that keeps you coming back for more.