To understand the balance behind the gravely voiced raps of L.A. native Awol One, listening to the last line of the MC’s new album with Canadian producer Factor is an ideal starting point. On the closing cut of the new LP Owl Hours called “Sunset Sandwich,” he raps, “It’s Awol / Yo, what’s the word? / I’m the school bully and the school nerd.”

Since coming up through the indie hip-hop scene in the late-90s, first working with the oddball Shape Shifters crew and then producers like Daddy Kev and Fat Jack, Awol with his gruff resonance is a voice to remember but one that has never been easy to define. He’s an MC who can get as reflective as some of the best ‘emo’ rappers yet he can turn around and talk more shit on the mic than a relentless stand up comedian.

Awol One- Celebrate

“I got this little Gemini split personality that pops out sometimes,” he says. “It’s just some natural shit. I didn’t set out to be like, ‘Yo, I’m this hardcore rapper,’ or, ‘Yo, I’m this nerdy, intellectual rapper.’ I just do my thing and me just being like that in real life is carried out into what I write.”

For Owl Hours, Awol stays true to his day-to-day happenings, arguably more precisely than on previous efforts. On the wild out tip, he shares stories of drinking madness with Tash and E-Swift of Tha Liks with “Waste the Wine”. Yet his introspective, more mysterious style of writing is no less prevalent with the hyper single “Official.” Here he intertwines childhood recollections with various societal observations.

What binds the album together is the feeling that every track was written during or about the late night, nocturnal hours. While there might be a few party tracks present, there’s nothing too sunny about the LP. “Most of the stuff was recorded pretty late and it’s kind of like a nighttime theme,” Awol explains of the Owl Hours concept. “It just fit.”

Working exclusively with Factor for the second time no doubt helped bring a certain consistency to the album as Awol wrote 90-percent of the songs listening to his collaborator’s work. With Factor’s alternative-leaning hip-hop production and the prevailing nocturnal theme, Owl Hours represents a new peak in Awol’s discography. At the end of the day, though, it’s still the MC’s voice that draws the most attention.

“There’s a lot of cats that aren’t really feelin’ my shit and they’re trying to hate on it, but one thing that everybody can say is, as soon as they hear a song that’s mine, it doesn’t sound like nobody else,” boasts Awol. “Whether that’s good or bad, it’s its own thing.”

Words by Max Herman

Awol One – Stand Up