Rich Garvey has been quietly building up a strong resume over the last few years. Born in Liberia and based in Minneapolis, he’s worked as both producer and emcee on a couple of different projects that have helped garner him some acclaim amongst a talented and crowded Twin Cities hip hop scene. His latest EP comes to us courtesy of the French label Cascade Records, Onyx Gemstone.

If you haven’t heard of Garvey, Onyx Gemstone is a good place to start. Working with another talented Minnesotan, producer Ackryte, Garvey delivers five solid songs that give a nice cross section of his abilities as an emcee. Ackryte has a knack for putting together tracks with an incredible amount of warmth to them, with a mostly downtempo, jazz-sampling backbone. This gives Garvey a great platform to spit his rhymes, whether it be the self-esteem anthem of “Gorgeous,” the political shit talking of “Best I Ever Been,” or the romantic confessions of “Compliment.” Garvey has an easy-going flow that sounds really conversational, and he’s got plenty of charisma on the mic as well. One thing that I especially appreciate here is that when Garvey gets in romantic mode, he manages to talk dirty without getting cliché or disrespectful. In a perfect world this wouldn’t need to be said, but this world is far from perfect. The real gem of the EP is “Gorgeous,” another song that shouldn’t need to be written, but we’ve (still) got a long way to go with race relations in the U.S., so I’ll gladly take a well-written, heartfelt song with a message like “Black is beautiful.”

Onyx Gemstone gives us five quality songs that serve as a nice window into what Rich Garvey is capable of as an emcee, and his chemistry with Akryte is great. Hopefully, this won’t be the last we hear from these two working together.