Not much time has gone by since MC Elijah Black’s last mixtape, The Brother From Another Planet, but he is already back with another one before he drops his debut album. This one, entitled Boom Baps & Heartbreak, is pretty much what it sounds like – a breakup record. It’s a nice change of pace, since we don’t get a lot of that in hip hop. The mix begins with a short tribute to Nate Dogg (R.I.P.) before giving way to Black’s rhymes. The musical tone remains in the early ‘90s on the West Coast throughout the mixtape, with references to everything from G-Funk to the Pharcyde.

My only complaint here is that there’s not much shift in tempo or tone. While The Brother From Another Planet had an advantage of a complex concept and a more varied structure, Boom Baps does not. I’m not about to fault a man for feeling maudlin while dealing with a breakup - we’ve all been there - and I appreciate his candor. This problem isn’t even specific to Black. There are plenty of singer-songwriter albums that I can’t listen to all that often because they are too sad and slow (Destroyer’s Trouble in Dreams comes to mind).

This minor criticism aside, Boom Baps & Heartbreak is still a good mixtape, and still has me anticipating his full-length debut. He’s a talented wordsmith, and with the two mixes that he’s released so far, he’s shown us that he has a lot of ideas and isn’t afraid to put his heart on his sleeve. Hopefully it will all come together soon.