North Carolina emcee SkyBlew has been releasing some truly excellent albums over the last couple of years, including my personal favorite, SkyBlew The Cowardly Boy! in 2016. Over the last year, though, he’s remained relatively silent after he released his project with Sublime Cloud. Now the silence is broken, and he has emerged with two new projects. One of those projects is Painting ‘Til She Dials.

The short explanation that SkyBlew provided for this album is, “I painted this dreamy soundscape, during the time I was on standby, awaiting a call…Clear your mind, press play & embark on a journey; through a variety of colors, space & sounds…” This might seem fairly abstract at first, but it will make more and more sense as the album plays out. For this project, SkyBlew enlists production from Scottie Royal, Mag.Lo, Oh Genius, SublimeCloud, Truck Willis, and Sleeping Awake. The overall sound coming from these producers is slightly different than previous efforts from SkyBlew. SkyBlew’s wheelhouse is what he call’s “jazz hop,” a smoother style of production drawing on jazz samples. This time out, the production is drawing more on funk and R&B from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, giving the album a fatter, funkier feel. The result is that SkyBlew switches up his flow a little, moving between his trademark smooth, wordy flow and one that is spaced out a little more, with more deliberate pacing. Where this really pays off for SkyBlew is with the hooks. Painting features some of the biggest, most memorable hooks of his career so far. Lyrically, this album is about letting your mind wander while waiting for a call you’re excited about, while also nervous that you might miss it. What this means is that we get rhymes that move from musings about love and life, to playful thoughts about video games, and everything in between. You can listen to tracks one at a time, and you’ll still enjoy them, but it’s more fun to go through all the twists and turns and ups and downs as SkyBlew’s mind strolls along and moves between moments of stress to moments of bliss, from concrete real-life concerns to abstract what-ifs. It all comes together for a really fun listening experience.

SkyBlew is one of the most talented emcees working today, and this pair of releases really reinforces this idea. Painting ‘Til She Dials is a fun change of pace, and strikes a great balance between what we already know and love about him and stretching himself musically and lyrically.