Von Pea is of course the New York emcee who has been working as a solo artist and as one half of Tanya Morgan for over a decade now. He’s always keeping himself busy, having just released a solo EP just about a year ago, and producing Donwill’s solo album just earlier this summer. That’s not enough for Von Pea, who now comes back with a full-length solo album, City For Sale.

As you might infer from the title of this album, this is an album about growing up and having an evolving relationship with the city that you live in. Personally, on the most surface level, this is an album about the gentrification of New York. And if that’s all it was, there would still be a enough subject matter to make a compelling album. However, Von Pea takes things a step beyond, and really explores how one ties their identity to where they live, and how both the city and the person grow and change over time, and how they both affect each other. It’’s an incredibly thoughtful album coming from a very personal place, since Von Pea, as long time listeners know, is a native New Yorker whose love of the city and the hip hop it produced run deep within him. It’s a very honest and open approach to the album, and one that will really bring some issues to the table to make you think about where you live, and what you’re doing that might be helping or hurting your city, how where you live shapes your personality.

On top of all of this, there is also the matter of production. Von Pea has long been known as a dope emcee, but recently he’s started to showcase his production skills, with the biggest step coming from co-producing Donwill’s recent solo album, One Word No Space. With City For Sale, Von Pea takes another major step and self-produces his entire album. How did it turn out? Well, it’s safe to say that Von Pea is just as dope a producer as he is an emcee at this point. When the album opens with “Here Comes the Neighborhood,” he throws down a barn burner that also features some really interesting sample flips and brings in a nice dose of disco and old school hip hop to it. These absolute bangers continue for the next few tracks, and honestly, if that’s all Von Pea brought to the table, this album still would have been better than most. However, when you get to a track like, “Lets Be F’real,” Von Pea slows things down and delivers a sweet and soulful groove that really opens up the album and shows he can handle a more subtle style of production. By the time you get to the grand, sweeping closing beat of “No Award for the First,” Pea has takien you through a musical journey that is just as complex as his lyrical work, and just as rewarding.

At this point in his career, it would have been really easy for someone like Von Pea to just coast and release an album full of East Coast beats, funny punchlines, and maybe a personal song or two and call it day. And that album would have been fine. But Von Pea didn’t want to make just another album in his discography. He wanted to make THE album in his discography, the one that people will point to when someone mentions they haven’t listened to Von Pea. The one that will make a critic like myself say that he really pushed himself to make a special album that really elevated his status in my mind. He’s done just that. City For Sale is truly one of the special albums of 2019.