Spectacular Diagnostics is a producer from Chicago who has been releasing music since the mid-2010s. In 2015, he announced his ambition with the release of an EP called RAW EXOTIC, which featured three tracks with Jerimiah Jae, Vic Spencer, and LongLiveCarl. From there, he expanded upon that to give us his album, RAW GAME, which was then followed up by RAW STUDIES in 2018. That led to RAW UNKOWN in 2020, which now brings us to 2023, and his most ambitious album to date, RAW LESSONS.

Spectacular Diagnostics is a hard producer to pin down and write about, because it’s not any one particular thing about his style that defines him. It’s a very avantgarde style of production, with roots in classic crate digging, except Spectacular Diagnostics is more like a free jazz musician the way he flips and reassembles those samples, making something completely unexpected and challenging when he’s done with them. As a result, this isn’t an album with a lot of pop moments, or even singles. It’s much more an album that you really need to sit with and listen to all the way through, so that you can really get a sense of how all of this disparate pieces fit together. On top of all of this left field production, Spectacular Diagnostics is bringing in a murderers row of talented emcees to get abstract with their rhymes over his beats, including Curly Castro, Illogic, Defcee, King Kashmere, NAHreally, SonnyJim, Kid Acne, CLBRKS, Immi Larusso, Bruiser Wolf, Jermiside, PremRock, Fatboi Sharif, Lee Scott, Bisk, Mike Ladd, Remi Rough, and Juice Aleem. Everyone understands the assignment, and we get a lot of great emcees rising to the challenge and delivering verses where they have to switch their flows up and match the sonic and rhythmic energy that Spectacular Diagnostics has given them, but Fatboi Sharif delivers a wild verse with so much confidence and charisma, he manages to do the impossible and stands out amongst this crowded field.

RAW LESSONS is ambitious, adventurous, and challenging, but also incredibly rewarding if you’re willing to put in the time with this album. Spectacular Diagnostics isn’t interested in making any sort of “typical” hip hop album. He wants to not only challenge himself to come up with something original, he wants to challenge his listeners expectations as to what hip hop can sound like.