OG Aborigines is the New York duo of Rapswell and Squires. The group made their debut back in 2016, when they dropped Rice Krispy Treats, a tribute to the Stretch and Bobbito era. While the two worked on various projects, they came back together in 2021 to drop Future Primitive, a tribute to skater/musician Tommy Guerrero. Now they have returned once more with a tribute project, this time paying their respects to filmmaker Roger Corman with The Man with the X-Ray Eyes.

While the subject matter has shifted with this project, the style of hip hop the OGs are throwing down is still rooted in that Stretch and Bobbito era, with lots of soulful and jazzy boom bap for days. These classic grooves set the scene, but then the real fun happens when Swell hops on the mic and starts spitting all of these creative rhymes inspired by Roger Corman. For those that aren’t familiar with the name, Corman is a legendary director and producer who gave us such films as Bucket of Blood, Death Race 2000, and Little Shop of Horrors, just to name a few. Like any good nerdy project like this, Swell isn’t just rehashing the plot of these movies, but instead is jumping between assuming voices of different characters and just using the setting as a jumping off point for his lyricism. It’s a fun project, to be sure, but there is also a lot of musical and lyrical depth to the album as well, so that it lives well past any sort of novelty of the first listen. By the second time you’re listening to the album, you’re not trying to catch references as much as you’re just appreciating it for the dope hip hop album that it is.

The Man With the X-Ray Eyes is a nice shift from OG Aborigines. It’s a fun and creative twist on a style of hip hop that is tried and true, but then they also just give you a really good hip hop album that you can keep returning to over and over again.