PANIC

TOBi’s third proper album opens with a lyric that cuts straight to the heart of the contemporary Black experience: “A young man died today, what have we to show?/A country split in two.” But it’s not the Toronto rapper delivering the verse. It’s sampled from ’70s-era LA funk ensemble the U.P.C. All-Stars, and the enduring relevance of those words serves as the lighter fluid for *PANIC*’s fiery opener “Someone I Knew,” where TOBi plots his origin story against the tumultuous post-9/11 backdrop of street violence and systemic racism. Threading mythic personal narrative and unsparing social commentary into a tapestry of vintage soul/jazz sounds, *PANIC* is a bold statement of purpose in the tradition of classic Kanye and Kendrick, a delirious display of pugilistic attitude and pitch-shifting eccentricity. Arriving in the midst of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary season, *PANIC* reasserts the genre’s political potential by calling out colonialism and Cop City with Kenny Mason on “Flatline,” yet still honors its original function as dance music: “Move” rides its funky bounce into a simmering Afrobeats-inflected coda, effectively connecting hip-hop’s block-party roots with contemporary international club-bumping variations. But with “Keep From Falling,” TOBi taps into a more vulnerable vein while exuding the supreme confidence to step outside of hip-hop, by delivering a showstopping ballad that blurs the line between folk, R&B, and brass-powered soul.