Killer Mike - MICHAEL

That Killer Mike is a skilled storyteller - both lyrically and otherwise - is not, by now, news. Yet there’s something about the vignettes he paints on ‘MICHAEL’, his first solo album since 2012’s ‘R.A.P. Music’, that suggests that while he’s seemed an open book so far, there’s still plenty for him to reveal. At the core of the record - which, as its title suggests, shows the rapper as the man rather than the moniker - sits ‘Motherless’. Built around perhaps the unlikeliest of hooks, the starkness of its lyrics shocks, awes and tugs at the heartstrings all at once while, by the end of the song’s runtime, it nonetheless proves an earworm. Elsewhere, he finds sonic gold in stories of teen pregnancy (‘Slummer’), the vista from his barber shop (‘Something For The Junkies’) and navigating the world post-fame (‘Scientists & Engineers’, which also boasts the talents of fellow Atlantans-made-good, André 3000 and Future). Its most immediate moment may come via the El-P featuring ‘Don’t Let The Devil’, with its musical bombast and Mike as most have heard him until now, but this is a sonically rich record that is likely to reveal yet more on each listen.