ShrapKnel is the duo consisting of long time friends and collaborators PremRock and Curly Castro. They marked their official debut as a duo last September, when they released their first EP, Cobalt. Now it’s time for their first full-length album, which is self-titled.

For their first album, ShrapKnel turn to another friend, ELUCID, to produce the album. A lot of people probably think of ELUCID as an emcee first, because he’s got a big personality on the mic, but he’s been really ramping up his production credits as of late. On this album, he seems to have pushed himself to a new level. While he’s still working in the same realm of dark, psychedelic beats, he’s found a way to dial back the harshness just a little and bring just a little bit of a smoother funk to the proceedings. It makes the music just a little more accesible, while still retaining it’s weirdness. ShrapKnel feeds off of this energy, bouncing around with their rhymes, giving you a little taste of a lot of different sides of the two artists. Both emcees have distinct deliveries on the mic, with PremRock’s smooth flow and Castro’s booming growl. They keep you on your toes as they go back and forth with abstract poetry, keen social observations, and wry, sarcastic senses of humor. They also keep up their reputation as deep basketball geeks, including a song on the album named after Aaron McKie, the oft overlooked guard who played alongside Allen Iverson on the Sixers. They also bring in a few friends along the way to join in the fun, with guest spots from Zilla Rocca, CASTLE, billy woods, Googie, and Henry Canyons, giving the album a real posse feel to it. The whole thing comes together to sound like some really classic underground shit for anyone who came up on the late ‘90s/early ‘00s experimental East Coast hip hop. The only minor drawback on the album is that being familiar with both of their solo work, I know how good they both are with longform narratives in their rhymes, and we don’t get any of that here. I know that’s tougher to pull off in this kind of setting, but I have a feeling that if they found the right scenario to make it work, they could really take things to the next level.

ShrapKnel is exactly what you want out of a debut album from two veterans like PremRock and Curly Castro. They challenge their listeners, bring a lot of different looks on the mic, and they have fun bouncing rhymes off of each other. Hopefully, this won’t be the last we hear from them, because I think they could build something truly epic in the future.