The Library Steps is a new duo consisting of old friends and Backburner members Jesse Dangerously and Ambition. They’ve come together to release their first full-length album, Rap Dad, Real Dad.

One of the fun things about a crew as big as the Toronto/Halifax/Ottawa crew known as Backburner is that it seems like there’s a never-ending series of sub-groups that can form. In this case, Dangerously is on the mic, and Ambition on the beats. Of course, both are multi-talented, so Ambition does hop on the mic to drop a verse on “Home Team,” and Dangerously does play glockenspiel and keyboards on a couple of tracks. The duo take their name from the steps of the Halifax Memorial Library, where they would assemble as youths every Friday as the doors closed to rap, beatbox, and play tapes for each other. On Rap Dad, Real Dad, you both get the energy of these young kids who clearly came up with the deepest love and knowledge of underground hip hop, and the perspective of guys who have been doing this a long time and have reached the maturity of adulthood. This means that you get some smart, emotional material that you’ll be able to relate to on a very personal level, and then you also get some songs that are just fun and full of clever wordplay and shit talking. Ambition is a very talented producer who finds a way to make everything flow seamlessly as he moves from banging boom bap beats to some stark, minimal backpack beats, to some warm and intimate R&B-flavored beats. Dangerously does a great job on this album in creating some clever and catchy hooks that serve as entry points into some complex lyricism in the verses. This could be the extremely fun, “[A,Z]A+[A,Z]B+[A,Z]C to Infinity,” in which Dangerously takes on the challenge of making rhymes from two-letter words or phrases as he works his way through the alphabet. This can also take a more serious turn, such as on “Well Wishers,” which takes the phrase “wishing well” as a starting point for some mature discussion about the difficulties of learning to let go of the animosity you might feel for those that have hurt you in the past. There are a lot of guests on the album, but it’s always in the service of the song and album. This could be the fun posse cut of “Nothing Fri3ndly,” which features Backburner emcees More or Les, Wordburglar, Swamp Thing, The Mighty Rhino, and Ghettosocks, or it could be the timely and heartbreaking vocals of illGil on “Well Wishers,” whose powerful voice pushes an already great song over the top.

Real Dad, Rap Dad is the type of album you’d expect from two hip hop veterans and old friends. They have great chemistry, have plenty of fun, and find room for some serious talk about real issues as well. The Library Steps are putting on a clinic with their debut album.