New York emcee PremRock and Toronto producer Fresh Kils started collaborating a few years back, with their excellent debut album, Leave In Tact, dropping in 2016. Since that time, they’ve released a remix collection and another EP, Poet’s Payday, coming just last year. They are back now with another EP, Shelf Life.

Both PremRock and Fresh Kils are versatile artists who can rock a crowd and have fun with it, but also know how to tap into the subtle and intimate side of hip hop, which is what they are doing here on Shelf Life. No, this won’t bring the house down, but it will fill up you mind and soul with smooth, jazzy beats and excellent storytelling and imagery. Just listening to the title track, which opens the EP, I knew I was in for a treat, with Kils coaxing this haunting acoustic guitar line and piano chord changes over boom bap drums and PremRock starts to lay down some really vivid wordplay that fluctuates between clever and confessional, only to get to the chorus where he simply asks, “What’s the shelf life on lightning in bottle?” As you continue through the next seven tracks, things continue in this vein. Kils and Rock have incredible chemistry together, and they manage to make an EP that seems straightforward on the surface but contains layers upon layers to dig through with each song, rewarding with each listen. Shelf Life is all about the little things, and these two seem to delight in the details. It’s an EP that sounds amazing on your headphones, ideally on a cool and overcast day where you can really get inside your own head and pick apart the finer points of this release.

Fresh Kils and PremRock have been at this a while, and this is the type of mature release you’d expect from a duo of veteran artists who know that every release doesn’t have to be BIG. Shelf Life is all about the understated side of hip hop, inviting you in and rewarding you storytelling and musicianship.