Samurai Banana is an artist and member of the Karma Kids who has been around for several years, working as a touring deejay, dropping remixes and beat tapes, and co-hosting the Dope Shit podcast. After all this time, he’s finally releasing his debut full-length album on Uncommon Records, Just Tired.

Samurai Banana is an artist who came up on East Coast underground hip hop, and it shows when you listen to Just Tired. This is to say that his music is definitely in a lineage, drawing on this history of gritty, dark beats with unexpected sample sources. The drums hit hard, the sounds aren’t always predictable, and there is this sense of eeriness to a lot of the album. It’s definitely an album that you’re going to want to really sit with an absorb one-on-one, where you can get lost in this sci-fi/horror-inspired soundscape and let your imagination run wild. While this is Samurai Banana’s first full-length album, he’s been around for a minute and he’s clearly taken notes over the years, so this really ends up sounding like a veteran producer’s album, just full of confidence and bursting with ideas. Enough so that he’s willing to take risks and push the music into unexpected places, or to shift on a dime and go off in a different direction. He also shows a knack for picking some interesting vocal clips and spacing them out at just the right spots to give you some ideas to chew on while you’re listening without overdoing it.

Just Tired is an interesting album from a veteran deejay and producer who took a long and winding path to his first full-length project. It will challenge and reward listeners who are willing to take a chance on something a little different, who aren’t afraid of hip hop that might get a little dark.