Hip-hop in the 2000s has been ruined for me by the mere existence of 90s hip-hop. In high school, I thrived on a wave of creativity in the rap world, namely the mid-90s rise of Mobb Deep, Nas, and the Wu paired with final masterworks from the likes of Tribe and Tupac. Those artists marked a time when lyrics were intelligent, original, and purposeful and when beats were undeniably awesome. Since then, it’s all seemed like a bit of a downfall, a bland reworking of hip-hop’s promise. Sure, rap’s continued development as a commercial genre hasn’t only produced new bullshit MCs but has infected the promise of previous greats like, um, Nas and Mobb Deep. And when rap tries to avoid the “commercial” I find myself listening to (and not liking) the impenetrable or unnecessarily hyper-intelligent work of a band like Subtle. Yes, there have been some exceptions – thank you Jay-Z, thank you Clipse – but you get the point. All of this to say: I was quite pleased to hear Black Milk drop Tronic this year. At its simplest, Tronic is an album with good, original rhyming and dope-ass beats. It’s utterly refreshing, a break from the run-of-the-mill club hit production, sample for sample’s sake, and lyrics that amount to absolutely nothing. It’s not that Black Milk is even re-inventing the wheel: he just has good taste and quite a bit of talent. Furthermore, Tronic is a real album, full of fleshed-out songs (read: not packed to the brim with useless skits) and paced to demonstrate Black Milk’s wide-range of sound: from hard-hitting beats, to electro-infused grooves, to straight-up soul-inflected tracks. As underground as Black Milk wants to be, it’s tough to see him staying beneath the surface for much longer.

Download: Black Milk - The Matrix feat. Pharoahe Monch, Sean Price, and DJ Premier