Shubzilla and Bill Beats are an emcee and producer, respectively, from Seattle. They started collaborating in the mid-2010s, and they’ve kept that creative partnership going ever since. Their most recent album together, Belmont Tapes, came out in fall of 2021. Now they are back with a different type of project, Late Checkout.

The concept behind Late Checkout is that Shubzilla and Bill Beats recorded the entire album on the road, often one song at a time, setting up makeshift recording studios in hotel rooms – thus the title. How this plays out in practice is that we get an album that feels more like a throwback mixtape, hosted by Bill and Shubzilla, where all these great boom bap beats are thrown down and Shubzilla is the constant voice that brings it all together, but you also get this array of guest artists who are all rapping with this energy that comes from these makeshift, late night sessions. Over the course of the album, we get verses from Damn Selene, navi, Swell Rell, Gr3ys0n, Lord Xzae, Gross Angel, Ohm-I, Kadesh Flow, O Super, Prowess the Testament, and MessiahCarey. The great news here is that some of these names are probably familiar, and some aren’t, but all of the verses are good and will have you looking up some new artists to enjoy, which was always the fun of listening to a mixtape like this back in the day. While all the guests on this album bring it, the two that really stand out are Kadesh Flow and Prowess the Testament, who just take the whole thing up a notch as they bring so much energy and urgency, you’d think they were rapping for their lunch money. The funny thing about a project like this is that Shubzilla and Bill Beats have been so consistently good over the years, it can be easy to overlook their contributions to their own album this time around, just because of all the guests. However, they are the glue with the chemistry, using their banging beats and attitude on the mic to drive the project forward and give it a backbone.

Late Checkout is a fun project from Shubzilla and Bill Beats. It’s not an easy type of project to put together, but I’m glad they did, because the creative energy, the comradery, and just the fun that was had in the course of recording it comes through time and time again.