Old Self is an emcee from New Haven without much to his resume yet, just a couple of singles, so you might not have heard of him yet. Fortunately, though, some that had heard him is Lt. Headtrip from the New York collective The Karma Kids. He got together with Old Self, and worked with him to produce his debut album, Word Art Gallery.

There are plenty of debut albums that feature an artist that is trying to figure out who they are as they are making the album. In other cases, through some combination of doing enough work ahead of time and already figuring out what styles work you, a debut album can come across as this self-assured introduction. That’s what Word Art Gallery sounds like – a very confident introduction into Old Self’s world. I don’t know to what extent Lt. Headtrip helped him in finding his voice, but I can say for certain that they have excellent chemistry together. Lt. Headtrip is an underrated producer, and his balance of old-school East Coast production and new school underground weirdness works perfectly here. Old Self reminds me a little bit of a younger Aesop Rock, not in terms of verbal dexterity or flow (although he does have a similar register to his voice), but in terms of his use of sarcasm, irony, and absurdism in dealing with the ridiculous and frightening nature of society. On its surface, it’s easy to pinpoint Old Self’s humor, and his love of pop culture references, and these might seem like ways that he’s distancing himself from addressing real issues in his lyrics, but the more time you spend with this album, the more it will be revealed that Old Self is actually using his humor as a bridge into talking about real issues, whether it be his family, his mental health, or his feelings about politics and society at large. As a result, along with Lt. Headtrip’s challenging and shifting production on the album, this is an album with a lot of layers to it. It’s fun to listen to at first, and delightfully weird, but the more time you spend with it, the more substance you realize is bubbling just below the surface.

Word Art Gallery is an excellent debut album from a New Haven emcee that is very comfortable in his own style. He was fortunate to find a collaborator in Lt. Headtrip that was so successful in helping him realize his vision, and the results are an album that will stay in rotation for some time to come.