A few years ago, I thought about doing an album called Return of The Cool. It’d be a take off on Lupe’s second album and talk about some more players of Lupe’s story while still being Speed on the Beat enough to not be a straight-up swagger jack. Thankfully, I killed off that idea and ran with doing stuff like the Songs For… trilogy. But, this isn’t about me.

Nick Grant recently released his Return of the Cool album and it’s, well, cool. Smooth instrumentals allow Grant to just flow about his coolness and his grind. Lush tracks like “Drug Lord Couture” and “Gotta Be More” just jump out the speakers and paint themselves among that space between your ears and bring us into his life. Overall, it’s a solid return to the cool era of rap, but also presents us with a new era: one that’s real but flashy while still being real flashy. It’s slick, but it’s not caught up on just the glitz and glamor. It’s like if Cole met with Lupe and then they met with Ghostface Killah. Check it out below.