Marco Polo is a producer originally from Toronto, but he’s been based in New York since the early 2000s. Since that time, he’s worked with everyone from Pumpkinhead to Pharoahe Monch to Large Professor to Rah Digga, just to name a few. Now he’s teamed up with a true Brooklyn hip hop legend, Masta Ace, to deliver A Breukelen Story.

Masta Ace is one of the more interesting people in hip hop, in the way that while he never achieved huge success at any point in his career, he’s managed to keep working, keep putting out albums, and remained to sound relevant after all these years. He’s never been prolific, but he has kept working at a steady pace since he dropped his first album all the way back in 1990, when he first started to make his case to be your favorite emcee’s favorite emcee. He’s earned that reputation for not just being someone with a good flow or showing some personality on the mic, but for putting a lot of himself out there, and for being a great storyteller with a knack for tackling relevant social and political issues. What’s made him incredibly interesting to watch as the years have gone on is that while he’s never chased the fame or the youth, he’s also never transitioned into a grumpy old man the way that I’ve seen other artists do. He’s still interested in life and the world around him, he’s interested in working with artists that inspire him, and he still truly enjoys rapping. That all comes through on A Breukelen Story. Working with someone like Marco Polo isn’t about trying to find a producer to make him sound fresh or anything like that, it was just about finding another artist who was on the same wavelength as he is, and who was excited about what they could create together. Marco Polo works in the classic East Coast boom bap style, building beats off of soul and jazz samples, and finding some great midtempo grooves. This works perfectly for someone as Brooklyn as fuck as Masta Ace is, who can feel these grooves, sit in the pocket, and spit his rhymes and spin his tales. A Breukelen Story is kind of like eating comfort food. Sometimes you want to try something different and get out of your comfort zone, and sometimes you want to go to that spot in your neighborhood where you know they have your favorite meal and you feel right at home. If you came up on that classic early ‘90s East Coast sound, this album will immediately sound familiar to you. However, this isn’t just about comfort, because even if the sound fits a certain formula, you still need energy and inspiration to sound fresh. Otherwise, people could just put on one of your older albums. What makes A Breukelen Story a really compelling listen is that Masta Ace is still curious about the world around him, he still cares about his community, and he’s still pushing himself to grow as a person. Nowhere is this more apparent than on “I Still Love Her,” featuring Pearl Gates. Referencing Common’s 1994 song, “I Used to Love H.E.R.,” which lamented the changing directions of hip hop, Masta Ace uses that jumping off point to discuss two things – how his relationship with hip hop has grown and changed over the years, but also how he’s had to unlearn some toxic masculinity as well. As he works his way through the verses, he goes into depth about how hip hop doesn’t belong to any one person, and how he’s learned that how he expresses his love for hip hop is just by making the best hip hop that fits himself, to build community, and to not get too worked up when others are making hip hop that doesn’t fit into the same box. By engaging with the same metaphor that Common used all those years ago, talking about hip hop as a woman, Masta Ace is also able to work into the song how he’s also learned to let go of ideas and expectations of women that were ingrained in him as a young man. It’s an incredibly mature and thoughtful song, and it’s indictive of the whole album. It’s smart, soulful, and it bumps.

A Breukelen Story is an album that could have easily sounded like two artists going through the motions, and it also very easily could have turned into some grumpy old man raps. It didn’t though, because Marco Polo and Masta Ace still care, and they are still inspired to try their best to make music that matters. Marco Polo has been at this for over fifteen years, but Masta Ace has been at this for over thirty. Together, they’ve given us the blueprint for how to make a great hip hop album as you grow older. You don’t have to chase the sound of the younger generation, or anything like that. You just have to care, and you have to have the energy to still put everything you’ve got into the music. That’s exactly what they’ve done here.