5 out of 5

Label: Rhymesayers

Produced by: Various

Whoa, what in the hell this is the masterful teamup as presented on Lice amped up to somewhere way beyond ten, our AR and HS duo both at the tops of their games and matched with producers providing insanely quirky, dense – and fitting – beats.

Perhaps this is due to the subject matter feeling a bit darker here. Lice was an ideal blend of serious and silly, and that fed through to the beats. Opener Zilch kicks things off very much in modern day Aesop territory, a bleepy Tortoise-like beat (from Dan Hayden) while our emcees trade slick verses. Couple Things is a level-setting gauntlet after this lead-in, keeping up the pace and dropping most sentiment of smiles across Mondee’s dark and building guitar/keys hook. While you get Oatmeal Cookies in the middle of this EP, the repeated title of which probably seems like it’s going to be silly, that Rock starts off his verse with ‘Hated myself since before it was cool…’ already puts us in a different place than all that, and his self-produced crunchy, funky electro beat is sequenced perfectly in the set’s middle, also corrected the slight sequencing wiggle that winged the flow of Lice.

Closing duos Mud and Stop The Bleeding continue a theme of oppressive expectations – making good despite what people may think of you. SoberMindedMusic’s production on Mud is warm and soulful, mapped to a squiggly guitar line; Stop The Bleeding is all braggadocio, a non-stop pace set by R. Thentic post an intense bit of rock and roll feigning at the start.

An EP to live on repeat forever; makes it seems like Aesop and Homebody have been / should’ve been rapping together forever.