Lando Chill has made a big splash in a short amount of time. Since 2016, when he dropped his debut album, For Mark, Your Son, the Chicago-born, Tucson-based artist garnered a lot of attention for his unique approach on the mic and his emotionally charged lyrics. Last year, when he dropped his sophomore album, The Boy Who Spoke To The Wind, he not only released one of the best albums of the year, he also featured a producer in The Lasso who would emerge as his friend and partner in music. While the two recently relocated to Los Angeles and Detroit, they went on a recording binge before they left, and they have just made their best album yet in Black Ego.

At the opening of the second track on the album, “clypped,” you here Lando say, “Man, they said we couldn’t evolve, Lasso!” I don’t know who “they” are, but “they” couldn’t be more wrong. Lando started off on a stronger note than most artists do with his debut album, but the subsequent growth and expansion he’s shown since then with his sophomore album and his EPs is frankly outstanding. I believe part of this comes from the fact that Lando never felt like he fit in, no matter where he’s been, so he’s always just created his own path. When he met Lasso, he finally found someone that equally didn’t fit in, and his eclectic production style both energized and challenged Lando to continue to evolve. In listening to Black Ego, several things became abundantly clear to me. One is that nothing else this year will sound like Black Ego. Lasso brings in elements of jazz, gospel, psychedelic rock, house, trip hop, and glitch to form a soundscape that will move from moments of meditative bliss, tense noise, and hard-hitting confrontational funk. This range fits perfectly with Lando, who has an absolutely gorgeous pure tone to his singing voice, which resonates on the low end and communicates a raw vulnerability as he reaches falsetto, and then also can spit with the best of them, from moments of rage and energy to moments of laidback rhymes that sit perfectly in the pocket of the groove. On top of all this, Lando is an incredibly intelligent, thoughtful, and honest lyricist, which elevates the album to a level that few artists achieve. The main focus of the album is identity, and Lando goes in from every angle, whether it be gender, race, class, sexuality, geography, drug use, or any other marker that we use to identity ourselves. It’s an album that you’ll enjoy the first time through, but you’ll enjoy it even more the tenth time through, because there’s just so much food for thought in Black Ego. Each time through you’ll pick up on a keen observation or a clever punchline with an underlying truth to it.

Black Ego is hands down one of the best albums of the year. It’s both incredibly inviting and challenging all at once, leaving you with one of the most fulfilling listening experiences you’ll have with an album this year. It’s full of twists and turns and subversive moments, extremely intellectual, and yet it’s still tons of fun at the same time. That’s no easy feat to pull off.