C.Shreve the Professor is an emcee from Asheville, North Carolina who has been working for over a decade, both as a solo artist and as part of the group Free the Optimus. His last album came in 2020, when he collaborated with Bristol producer ILE Flottante to make the album ILE.Pro. Now he’s back with a teaser EP done with D.R.U.G.S. Beats before his next big project drops called Must Be The Drugs.

D.R.U.G.S. Beats is a producer from Apex, North Carolina. His is a name that you might not know, but he’s been quietly killing it for years, producing for everyone from Killer Mike to Dr. Dre in the process. If you’re not already familiar with D.R.U.G.S. Beats, Must Be The Drugs is a great place to start, because in just four tracks you get a well-rounded view of everything he’s capable of. The EP opens with the title track, which has this great UGK-inspired beat, where a few key soul samples pair with some killer 808 that will make you want to hop in the car and go cruising around town with the windows down. “Dragon Luck” shifts to more of a classic East Coast boom bap, before getting weirder and darker into the underground hip hop style of “Let It Go.” Then we close with “Super Villains,” which finds D.R.U.G.S. Beats traveling to the Shaolin land to make a gritty RZA-inspired beat. All of this fits C.Shreve perfectly, who is enough of a veteran with a versatile flow that he can roll with whatever D.R.U.G.S. throws at him. He can get really personal with his rhymes at one point, then shift to talking mad shit, and then move to a more abstract lyricism or take on personas, like he does when joined by Jarv on “Super Villains.” He does it all with ease and charisma and plenty of layered wordplay that will have you catching something new each time you listen to the EP.

If this is the warm up, I can’t wait to see what else C.Shreve the Professor has in store for us. On Must Be The Drugs, he and D.R.U.G.S. Beats team up to give us four killer tracks with no filler, hitting on different styles on each track.