Fly Anakin is an emcee from Richmond, Virginia who has been releasing music for the last nine years. In that time, he’s collaborated with people like OhBliv and Butcher Brown, but he’s probably best known for his work with Pink Siifu. Last year, he released his breakthrough solo album, Frank. Now he’s back with a new project, Skinemaxx (Side A).

Skinemaxxx (Side A) promises to be the first volume of at least two, so it will be curious to see what this develops into, but in the meantime, we can assess this project for what it is on its own. It’s an interesting release in that it definitely feels like a mixtape project. It consists a lot of skits and transitional songs, and those fully formed songs don’t feel like singles, instead sounding more like an experiment in style, which features a lot of old school R&B and electro-boogie. It’s the type of release that you need to listen to as a full to get a scope of what Fly Anakin is doing, because again, there aren’t any real singles that stand apart on their own. It’s more of this experimental audio space that you just have to join in with Fly Anakin, and let everything take shape as you’re listening to it.

Fly Anakin has been establishing himself as one of the more creative and charismatic voices in hip hop in recent years, with Fly Siifu’s and Frank being major steps forward for him. We’ll see where this new project goes, but for right now we get to see Anakin take an interesting step to the side and make this experimental R&B hip hop.