The Cloaks is the Los Angeles duo of AWOL ONE and Gel Roc. The Project Blowed veterans first teamed up for their self-titled album in 2014, but then returned in 2019 with Cloak Encounters of the Third Eye. Now they are back with their third album, A Cloakwork Orange.

If there was a third member of The Cloaks, it would have to be Bristol producer Awkward, who also returns for his third go-round, making all of the beats featured on the album. You might also know him from his work with other L.A. act such as Open Mike Eagle or Acid Reign, but the two important factors here are that Awkward has an established chemistry with AWOL ONE and Gel Roc, and that the dude can lay down some great synth-based underground beats. There’s no real secret to enjoying this album – all you have to do is press play and listen to all of these talented artists have fun playing in the sandbox together. AWOL ONE and Gel Roc are talented emcees on their own, but the juxtaposition of their voices works really well as they trade lines and verses over all of these interesting beats that Awkward is throwing down. There’s always something just a little unusual about his rhythmic patterns or melodic choices that lesser emcees might get tripped up by, but not these two. In fact, they were having so much fun dropping all of these battle raps, party raps, pop culture references, and philosophical rhymes, they had to call in more friends and major talents to get involved. This means that we get appearances from Brevi, Aceyalone, Demrick, and Pawz One on a couple of tracks. This would have been enough flavor for most albums, but The Cloaks said, “No, we want to fuck shit up!” They then drop a posse cut called “Covenant of The Cloaks,” featuring Quaesar, Megabusive, and A7PHA (Mestizo & Doseone), which is already so much heat, but then raise the temperature even higher by letting DJ D-Styles and Sir Beans go apeshit scratching and cutting on the ones and twos, throwing down the gauntlet for posse cuts in 2022.

A Cloakwork Orange is the most fun way to start out 2022. There’s nothing confusing about this album, it’s just a bunch of veterans from the L.A. underground (and beyond) getting together and making music and having fun in the process. They clearly had such a good time making this album that it comes across to the listeners track after track.