Houston MC Anti-Lilly and Portland, Maine producer Phoniks make a really great team. On their second album It’s Nice Outside, Phoniks comes to play like the next Young Guru with some of the jazziest production I’ve heard since the days of Doom & J Dilla.
Anti-Lilly glides over Phoniks’ beats with general ease, though his cadence isn’t that varied throughout the seventeen tracks. He has a pretty solid workflow over the course of a song that goes from presenting a problem to discussing his fears and coming up with a potential solution; whether it’s about his future family, his job, his mental health, his friends, or paying off his mother’s house. It’s decent in execution, but lacks in animation.
Phoniks, on the other hand, really impresses on It’s Nice Outside, begging for the production to exist as instrumentals on its own beat tape. Tracks like “What Would You Do” and “Sunshine” are clear examples of the best of what Phoniks can put out, and if there’s anything amazing about this record, it’s the hopeful prospect of future Phoniks projects.
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