Mattic and producer Madwreck, two-thirds of the long disbanded The Others, reunite as Ill Scholars, their latest venture into tried and true hip-hop. The North Carolina natives come with an extensive pedigree in the business; Mattic (now based in France), having worked with many musical luminaries around the world, and Madwreck, a much sought-after producer, building his brand as one-half of The Dirty Art Club and putting his signature sound on various artists’ projects. Their work together on this self-titled debut proves a stylistic accomplishment, combining a healthy influence of jazz and funk with crisp boom-bap grooves.

The album’s first single, “Magic”, proposes a revival of the golden-age hip-hop duo, channeling such fine examples like Pete Rock & C.L Smooth and Eric B. & Rakim. Numbers like the title-track demonstrate Madwreck’s ingenious design of playing with convention yet finding new ways to open up the rhythms to allow some truly inventive ideas into the production. And the imaginative use of samples, as on the choral-soaked “Move Mountains” (ft: Yago Means), puts the duo a good mile ahead of the contending packs.