D. Horton, fka as Dave The Rapper, is an emcee from Columbus, Mississippi who has been releasing music for a few years now. Most recently, he’s been putting out a series of EPs called The Sessions. Now he shifts gears to drop a mixtape called Dungeon Baby.

As you might have inferred from the title of this mixtape, this is D. Horton’s ode to the Dungeon Family, the Atlanta creative collective that gave us such acts as Organized Noize, Goodie Mob, and Outkast. The trick here in doing such a project is that a lot of these beats and these songs are iconic amongst hip hop fans, especially those in the South, and so it can be tough to assert yourself as an artist not just get lost against these beats that everybody already knows and loves. Fortunately, D. Horton is a talented emcee who has built his reputation with a versatile and skillful flow, and brutally honest and emotional lyrics, so he’s able to balance the magnitude of these beats by just being himself on the mic and putting everything out there like he always does. By doing this, he takes you into the bedroom, car, shower, or wherever else a youngster coming up in the South loving hip hop might have rapped to these Dungeon Family songs, one day dreaming of making music as good as they were. And with that, you grow just a little bit closer to D. Horton, as he lets you take a peak on what his formative years as an emcee must have been like.

Dungeon Baby seems simple enough on its surface, but in actuality, it’s a tough task to pull off. D. Horton puts in the work, though, and puts in a lot of himself into the project, and manages to hold his own against some big beats that could have overshadowed a lesser emcee.