Don’t Smoke Rock, the long-awaited album by legendary producer Pete Rock and Harlem’s own Smoke DZA, released on Babygrande Records, is finally here — and not since DJ Premier and Royce Da 5’9” linked for their PRhyme project has such a dope multigenerational collaboration occurred. Incidentally, Royce joins Jadakiss, Styles P, Rick Ross, Cam’ron and many more in the project’s amazing lineup of featured artists. DZA is in rare form too, on top of his game, and the Soul Brother #1 certainly does not disappoint — supplying the rapper with nothing but bangers to go off on. This is grimy, soulful, New York Hip-Hop at its finest.

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The history behind the duo’s somewhat unexpected pairing actually begins with renowned New York DJ Funkmaster Flex, who put DZA on a Pete Rock beat for his 2013 Who You Mad At? Me Or Yourself? mixtape. A year later, after the introduction, Pete produced the closer for DZA’s third album, Dream.ZONE.Achieve. Then, in 2015, Pete made public mention of working on a substantial project with the MC, but they didn’t officially announce its December 2 release until this October — with a Halloween sacrifice of their track “Limitless” featuring the Nas-cosigned Dave East. In the months since, the duo has dropped two more singles off the project: “Milestone” with Jada, the Ghost and BJ the Chicago Kid and “Black Superhero Car” featuring Rozay.

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Besides the already released material, the album has several other standout joints like the percussively light “Hold The Drums” featuring Nickel Nine and the braggadocios “Show Off” with Wale, as well as incredibly dope left-field grit like “I Ain’t Scared” and “Until Then” featuring Mac Miller.

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This project is testament to the effectiveness of getting time-honored greats together with newer, hungrier artists and proves that the perceived generational divide in Hip-Hop is more superficial than some would like to admit.

Premiered at Complex.