Sleep Sinatra is an artist from Lincoln, Nebraska who has been releasing music since the mid-2010s. He’s been working at a steady pace since then, with 2022 being no exception. He released Brainstormz with KNGKVMI in May, and then released an instrumental project under his producer alias, Sinai. He wasn’t done though, as he’s now back with a new album done in collaboration with producer Ohbliv, Shadow Self.

Ohbliv is a producer from Richmond, Virginia who has been releasing music for over a decade, with projects out on Cascade, Fat Beats, and Paxico. In that time, he’s produced for people like Moor Mother, Fly Anakin, and ELUCID, just to name a few. In working with Sleep Sinatra, you can hear him really dial in the minimalism, forcing himself to be really creative with his chops and loops. The biggest challenge is how he keeps the percussion to a minimum, often forcing Sinatra and the listeners to find the groove within the melody of the samples he’s manipulating. Now, Sinatra has always had a fairly direct approach to rapping, but in this situation he’s being drawn to rap even more deliberately and help provide the rhythm to each track with his phrasing. He’s more than up to the challenge, and he’s coming at you with some really personal storytelling as he’s doing this, keeping the hooks and the verbal dexterity to a minimum as well. What this all boils down to is an album full of no frills hip hop. This is about as raw as it gets. Even when they bring in guests like Archibald Slim, Aakeem Eshu, Obijuan, J.U.S., and Flannel Lewis, nobody is coming in from left field to do anything crazy. It’s just beats and rhymes at it’s most raw form.

Shadow Self is a nice collaboration between Sleep Sinatra and Ohbliv. There is a great creative push and pull between their styles, and as a result you get an album that feels unique to their collaboration.