The Sorority is the new group out of Toronto consisting of emcees pHoenix Pagliacci, Haviah Mighty, Lex Leosis, and Keysha Fresh. The four women originally met when TeamBackPack put together a cypher for International Women’s Day back in 2016, which turned into the single “Ladies’ Night.” The four women realized that they had something special when they worked together and decided to call themselves The Sorority. Now the time has come to release their first album as a group, Pledge.

Pledge has so many things working in its favor, it’s almost hard to know where to begin. For one, it’s one thing to assemble four artists that you know are talented as individuals, but that doesn’t always guarantee that the chemistry will be there when they all come together. Fortunately, because of the way the group came together, there is a mutual admiration between the four emcees that means they are always working with each other to deliver the best song possible. There might be a little healthy competition where they inspire each other to dig deeper and give each performance their best, but you never get the feeling that anyone is having to jockey for position to get their voice heard. Instead, you get this great album with four dope emcees with four different styles, all coming together like Voltron to make some of the best hip hop you’ve heard this year, as they move from talking some shit to talking about romance to talking about race, gender and sexuality. It’s all on the table. Not only are all of the emcees women, but The Sorority made sure to highlight female producers as well, such as EveKey, Truss, along with some men like Young Dreadz, J.O. Mairs, Shash’U, Nine Ease, and PLVYHAUS. Together, they develop a sound that runs from some old school hip hop through to some modern trap beats and a little bit of everything in between. The important thing, though, is that it all works together, with a great pop sensibility. The end result is a really tight album that’s only ten tracks long, comes hard with the lyricism, has great hooks, and absolutely bangs.

It’s tough to get everything right with your first album, especially when you’re bringing in four different dynamic personalities like pHoenix Pagliacci, Haviah Mighty, Lex Leosis, and Keysha Fresh. Fortunately for all of us, they took the time to make sure they got it right, and now, two years after their first initial meeting, we have a brilliant album that will sound great at parties all summer long.