Awol One is a legend of the Los Angeles underground, recording for the past two decades as a solo artist, collaborating with people like Factor, and working as part of groups like Shapeshifters. Last year he teamed up with Gel Roc to release an album as The Cloaks, Cloak Encounters of the Third Eye. Now he comes back with a new solo album, Tony the Walrus.

If you’ve been following Awol One’s career over the years, Tony the Walrus will be no surprise to you. That’s because this is exactly the type of hip hop we’ve come to expect from him over the years. However, if this is your first time checking out Awol One, you might be taken by surprise with what you’re hearing. That’s because Awol One has carved out his own unique lane years ago, with a delivery that sounds slightly slowed down and slurred. It’s deliberately paced, and lacks any sort of verbal dexterity, and even his beats aren’t that fancy or glamorous. But then we you listen just a little bit closer, something odd starts to happen where everything begins to click. You notice all of these little nuances to the production that keep your interest, but even more so, you start to notice all of these really interesting turns of phrase and keen observations that will really get the wheels turning in your head. Tony the Walrus is a slow burn in that way. There’s no one big single – even tracks with Open Mike Eagle and Gel Roc and Megabusive are still a bit understated, but there is so much right below the surface that you can keep going back and catch all these bits and pieces you missed the last time through.

Tony the Walrus is the type of solid album you expect from a veteran like Awol One. There’s nothing unexpected, it just delivers on the same interesting high level that he’s been working on over the last two decades.