Maps, from NYC rapper billy woods and LA producer Kenny Segal, was their first full collaboration since 2019’s Hiding Places. Four years after that landmark record, the duo have reunited with a vengeance. Maps is a story of the road, or roads, taken and untaken; of living the dream and dreaming of another life. It is an album about trying to find your way home, after making your home wherever you lay your head. “Kenny and I made more songs together before Hiding Places than we did after,” woods says. “I think we only collaborated once over the last four years and although we didn’t talk about it, I think we wanted to let that energy build again. Neither of us wanted to make Hiding Places 2. We needed to go on other journeys, artistic and otherwise, to come back and do something fresh.” Produced in full by Kenny Segal, Maps features Danny Brown, ELUCID (Armand Hammer), Shabaka Hutchins, Sam Herring (Future Islands), Quelle Chris, Aesop Rock, Benjamin Booker, and ShrapKnel. Segal moves effortlessly through styles but everything is underpinned with deep basslines and mean drums laid down like railroad tracks. Weaving between poignant memoir, deadpan humor, and incandescent bursts of surrealism, Maps cements both artists’ place amongst the best of their time.

El-P, aka El Producto, is one of hip-hop’s most obstinate and adventurous pioneers, combining a lo-fi old-school aesthetic with a progressive rock musician’s inclination to push boundaries. He has never succumbed to the demands of corporate rap, instead choosing to pursue his own decidedly non-commercial direction. In the mid-’90s, he developed a strong reputation with the groundbreaking trio Company Flow, a band whose achievements include El-P-produced LP Funcrusher Plus on Rawkus Records, a label considered by many one of the best for intelligent hip-hop. Over the group’s auspicious stint together, he proved he was himself capable of intense lyricism as well as sonic production so powerful it could stand on its own. In the latter part of the ’90s, El-P was also a collaborator with Blackalicious, Mos Def, and Dilated Peoples. In 2001, after releasing one last album with Harlem rappers Cannibal Ox, the group chose to amicably pursue their own directions. El-P then started his own label, Def Jux — later renamed Definitive Jux to avoid a suit from Def Jam. Between label operations and work on a proposed solo album from former Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha, he found the time to work on his own solo release, Fantastic Damage, which saw the light of day in May 2002. A critical masterpiece, it was followed by a real change-up, 2004′s High Water, which was part of the Matthew Shipp-curated Blue Series and teamed the producer with Shipp, William Parker, and others from the fringe of jazz. Collecting the Kid, a collection of unreleased and hard-to-find tracks, appeared later that year. After nearly four years of work, El-P released his second proper production album, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, featuring contributions from the Mars Volta, Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails, and even Cat Power. In 2010, he declared Def Jux to be “on hiatus” and while the back catalog would remain in print, the lack of new releases meant El-P would have time to focus on his artistic work. The payoff came in 2012 with the release of two El-P associated full-lengths; R.A.P. Music, his collaboration with rapper Killer Mike, along with his own release, Cancer4Cure, which appeared on the Fat Possum label. The latter featured guest appearances from Danny Brown, Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire, and Killer Mike.