Bay Area producer Brycon knows how to stay busy. After a 2021 in which he released Music For Indoor Cats with iLL Sugi, Jeweler’s Loop with Lightbulb (as Diamond Lung), and There’s No More Room in Hell 7 with G-PEK, he already started off 2022 with a full-length album with Equipto, Can’t Stay Perched All the Time. Never one to rest on his laurels, he’s already back with another project, this time teaming with Profess Gabel to give us Corner Booth.

For someone to be as prolific as Brycon, you might expect a certain level of sameness across his projects, maybe just switching out emcees but keeping the beats the same. Maybe for a lesser producer, but one listen to Can’t Stay Perched All the Time and Corner Booth, and you can see how each project not only sounds different, but is tailored to the emcee Brycon is working with. For Corner Booth, Brycon is slowing things down just a tad, and he’s experimenting more with loops and layering and switching up his percussion a lot. It’s an album that sounds accessible at first, but the closer you pay attention, the more you realize how weird Brycon is really getting in the way he’s playing these different elements off of each other. Professa Gabel has worked with Brycon plenty over the years, so there’s a lot of chemistry and trust and between them. Again, the album seems accessible enough as you hear Gabel’s clear and direct delivery and raspy voice over the beats as your head begins to nod, but soon you’ll realize how careful and clever Gabel is with his word choice to fit these slightly off-kilter rhythms that Brycon is throwing down, but also to layer his lyricism without using a lot of words to do so. Nowhere does everything come together better than on the track “Slow Water,” featuring Ozer and Monk HTS. Built around a killer sung hook and these really infectious guitar and bass lines that bounce and dance together, Gabel cleverly maps out how he is able to navigate the world with out having to make big splashes, just moving carefully and intelligently with purpose.

Corner Booth is a great album from veterans of the Bay Area hip hop scene in Brycon and Professa Gabel. They understand each other really well and are able to play off of each other’s strengths in really interesting and subtle ways that will be sure to please any hip hop fan.