The Loop is a trio consisting of K-Due, Truss One and Brotha Freeze. All three members have ties to K Records’ 1998 seminal Classic Elements compilation. In recent years they’ve devoted themselves to reinvigorating the, well, classic elements of hip-hop: samples, scratches and head nodding breaks. Not to mention thoroughly researched and expertly-constructed lyrical science*.

Their new Dead End Streets album hearkens to that simplicity — those “basics,” if you will. (Though “basic” as a descriptor in the parlance of our modern times certainly does not apply here.) It’s the delicate craft of distilling something complex out of something so simple — hip-hop’s “something from nothing” maxim — that Dead End Streets executes so well.

*Though the word “faggot” as a dismissive term for someone wack is a practice that should remain  forever frozen in time. Curiously the boys felt the need to resurrect it here.