Pete Rock has earned every dang flower he’s been given. However, here’s another one: the man is legendary and his beats still feel modern, even a lot of his classics. It’s a little bit early to say that the production here is classic. However, it has that modern but vintage feel to it and doesn’t feel manufactured, at all. Both of these qualities make up about 99.9% of all Pete Rock beats. Add that in with some fire bars from M-Dot and you get the 2020 lesson in lyrical–and humanitarian/activist–exercise known as “The Atonement.”

The five-minute track was sampled on the title track of Logic’s Vinyl Days. This one is definitely a beautifully-done dark boombap song about Dot’s prowess at rapping and the [messed up] state of the world today. The visuals feature a B&W treatment with M-Dot walking through places long forgotten by the mainstream. That greatly matches up with the dark theme of the song: paying for one’s sins. Of course, in this case, it’s wack MCs as well as those who create hellish landscapes for others. I can’t say enough about the lyrics here; the punchlines are crisp and the flow is vintage-but-modern.

Check out the song below and its visuals and remember to support dope music in all its forms.