Veteran Bronx, New York rapper Nine has long possessed one of Hip-Hop’s illest voices. When his debut album Nine Livez dropped on Profile Records in 1995, it seemed like he was at the beginning of a successful career, bringing “redrum” to the game. Instead, he quickly slipped into obscurity after his Nine Livez follow-up Cloud 9, failed to do as well as his intro. However, Nine did start to release music once again in the late 2000s, and by 2009 he dropped his third official album Quinine.

In recent years two things happened: 1) Nine started dropping unreleased material with Smoke On Records out of Germany, and 2) he was a featured guest on the Snowgoons’ Goon Bap producer album. Smoke On is known for re-releasing classics from Group Home, Das EFX, Artifacts, and they have issued three “lost” Nine LPs (1999, Death of A Demo, The 9 Commandments) since they linked with him. The Snowgoons have also expanded their relationship with 9-Double-M by agreeing to produce and arrange a full project for the vet. This new studio album is titled King (also embedded below) and dropped last Sunday, September 9.

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While the ‘Goons and Nine had been promoting this album for quite a while now, they waited until only a month out to start dropping a barrage of singles. Three weeks ago they treated fans to the video for “Killmongor,” in which Nine sports his trademark cat’s eye contact lenses. Then last Friday Heads got a taste of a track featuring Conway The Machine, “Belafonte,” that was accompanied by an illustrated promo vid.

The latest banger from the beat quartet and raspy MC is not only a dope posse cut but also a reunion of sorts. On “Breathe,” 1990s label mates Nine and Smoothe Da Hustler reconnect to prove they haven’t lost a step since the Profile days. Smoothe was featured on Nine’s sophomore in 1996. As if that wasn’t reason enough to check this cut out, Mafioso Rap godfather, Kool G. Rap swings by to lace up the fly arrangement of strings and horns. While the visuals here are not a proper video once again, we do get a look at what these O.G.s look like in 2018.

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#BonusBeat: Stream Nine’s King album: