MilkDrop

Not many rap artists begin albums by talking about divorce. Never one to shy away from the serious and personal, local wordsmith MilkDrop (also known as John-Alan Suter) raps with equal passion about the city’s hip-hop scene (“Dirty Is”) and fatherhood (“While He Sleeps”). Falling Back to Earth, a follow-up to the prolific MC’s 2009 release, Rise Before the Fall, is a compact 10-track collaboration between MilkDrop (lyricist) and D/Will (producer), two of Kansas City’s veteran hip-hop artists and members of the Soul Providers crew. Despite the fact that many of MilkDrop’s confessional topics are also found on Rise, D/Will’s outer-galactic beats form soft pastels of sound perfectly suited for MilkDrop’s impressionistic streams of consciousness. Brimming with soul samples and verbose, hoarse-throated verse, MilkDrop and D/Will’s album delivers something rare from their genre: grown-folks’ music. Even if MilkDrop seems to have stumbled onto relationship trouble, advocates of thought-provoking rhymes and original production can be glad that both MilkDrop and D/Will are still married to the game.