Few emcees are quite capable of coherently stringing together bars about The Bible, conspiracies theories and mangling an enemy’s face with the business end of a box-cutter. But that’s pretty much Jedi Mind Tricks/Army of the Pharaohs front-man Vinnie Paz in a nutshell. The metal-mouthed Philadelphia emcee is the reigning impresario of angry independent Rap, establishing perhaps one of the most influential movements in underground Hip Hop since MF DOOM.

Now, after over a decade in the game, Vin Laden is setting out as a ronin with his debut solo LP, Season of the Assassin. The album is an exciting break from the usual JMT formula, with Paz hitting his stride as a lyricist and showing a different and more fully-rounded side to his craft.

Vinnie Paz - Season of the Assassin

Opening the album with a quote from Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, the Pazmanian Devil leaves no question as to what to expect: to paraphrase Rocky III, he’s a wrecking machine and he hasn’t sounded this hungry since the acclaimed Violent By Design. Although little has changed in with respect to his gruff bar-for-bar approach, Paz sounds reinvigorated. Songs like “Warmonger” and “Righteous Kill” best capture his reinvention, finding him barking out bars like, “I’m a fuckin’ thunderstorm, you’re a light shower / You a bitch, you shoot and miss like Dwight Howard / You can’t battle the God, I’m too precise, coward / That’s like Khalil Muhammad saying he’s white power.”

This is the ALBUM OF THE YEAR!!! Nothing but straight BANGERS… cop yours today from UndergroundHipHop.com and represent the underground until you are under the ground! And for all the REAL deejays cop it on vinyl HERE!