Illogic is an artist from Columbus who has been releasing music for about twenty years. Most recently, he dropped a re-interpretation of Flying Lotus’s Cosmogramma called The Cosmogramma Interpretations EP. After all that he’s accomplished in his career, Illogic found new ways to challenge himself by expanding his skill sets and doing more as he went into his latest project. That means he’s not only rhyming, he’s also producing, along with mixing and doing the photography for Autopilot.

Over the years, Illogic has worked with producers such as Blueprint, Ill Poetic, Blockhead, and Lucid Optics, just to name a few. As you listen to Autopilot, it will become clear that Illogic wasn’t taking their beats for granted – he was studying and figuring out his own sound this whole time. That means that when Illogic was finally ready to release a self-produced album, it sounds like he’s been making beats the past twenty years as well. From the opening moment of “Conquer the Climb!” to the closing of “The Depth (K.I.M.),” Illogic is giving you sophisticated, varied, intelligent beats that creep up on you and stick in your head. He’s giving you funky underground boom bap, but he’s also giving you tastes of dub, trap, and Latin beats, which all come together to give you a really complete and fulfilling listening experience. On the mic, Illogic is doing what he does best, delivering some thoughtful poetry that moves from abstract spoken word to introspective confessions to battle raps full of verbal dexterity. All in all, it’s the type of album that you would expect out of a veteran like Illogic – everything very thoughtfully laid out, well sequenced, and extremely well-rounded. Some personal standouts include the dub horn hits on “Shrine to Ego,” and the stellar syncopated rhythm/bass line interplaying with Illogic’s melodic delivery on “Out of This World.” Really, though, you can’t go wrong with this one.

Even after twenty years in the game, Illogic is finding new ways to challenge himself and keep things fresh. Autopilot is anything but – this is an album from an artist that is fully engaged. He’s not just giving us the high quality lyricism we’ve come to expect, but he’s producing himself for the first time, skipping the learning curve and going straight to sounding like he’s been doing this for decades as well.