AIM & QNC - 8/10
The Habit Of A Lifetime (And How To Kick It) (ATIC)
With Fetty Wap being 2015's hip hop breakthrough star, things are pretty bad out there. Thankfully, Manchester producer Aim and New York duo Q Ball & Curt Cazal have come to the rescue. Their collaboration is a joy: funny, witty, cheeky, literate and party-centric. Aim provides an old-school-meets-modern feel, especially when injecting John Carpenter-style synths, and while lyrics on songs such as the Niko-featuring 'The More I Get (The More I Want)' are sometimes salacious, they never reek of misogyny. The title track, with its cameos from Grand Puba and Sean Price, and the closing 'She Ain't You' are proud paeans to their scene, and the whole LP is a testament to the best that hip hop can still offer.
File under Classy hip hop
Download '1000 Reasons', 'She Ain't You'
Like this? Try QNC 'Duo Dynamic' (Grand Central)