Medhane’s writing leans on the value of blood bonds and forged friendships. “With my fam,’ on the grind, going to the sky/Putting pain in, tell a story like a painting,” he raps on “Dan Freeman,” the opening track from his new project Full Circle. Street rap narratives often involve a come-up, but this NYC laureate of dread raps like a young man living moment-to-moment, day-to-day, check-to-check. With no expectation that music will deliver riches, the only sense of purpose he derives is from the people who surround him.

This darkness is palpable in Medhane’s uncompromising aesthetics. It’s fair to say the Brooklynite arrived in the shadow of Earl Sweatshirt, but the comparisons no longer serve him. At eight tracks and just 15 minutes, Full Circle feels lower-stakes than last year’s debut album Own Pace, but it finds Medhane further disappearing into his singular style: gritty samples, low-key rhymes, and no real hooks.

Medhane’s bars have always been economical, and here they feel shorter and more clipped than ever before. You can picture him paging through his rhymes with a red pen, crossing out unnecessary words. Or perhaps his scattered wordplay just reflects a stream-of-consciousness thought process. Take the 82-second “Big38” (one of six songs that come in under two minutes): With no wasted motions, Medhane declares his love for his kin, muses on astrology, and asserts he has “sent the hurt away” with the forlornness of someone just pretending to be ok. While his flow in the past felt spectral, Medhane has modified his voice into something more forceful. Rather than letting his rhymes gently float through the mix, he now regularly thumps out his syllables, sounding more confident on the mic than earlier recordings.

There are other surprises on Full Circle. The screwed sample and militant tone of “I Was Just In the Mara” resembles Kanye West’s Wyoming sessions work, and rising rapper maassai almost steals the spotlight as she viscerally describes “running from hearses” as “cardio.” “4Evafaded” closes the album with an old soul loop that would instantly turn the head of Griselda Gang, prompting Medhane to sign off with some positivity: “Why relish the hurt?” he asks, taking a nostalgic beat to remember his grandmother palming him some cash and advising that he save rather than spend it.

Mostly, though, Medhane traverses a chilly version of New York. On “No More Tequila,” he recalls a three-day bender; the pensive “Redline” details a winter’s day in the life as he moves through the city with friends, jumping subway turnstiles, buying weed, and facing wind and rain in just a grey hoodie. Medhane exists in this realm not on his own, but alongside compatriots MIKE, Adé Hakim (formerly known as Sixpress), Caleb Giles, and Slauson Malone. Together, they are creating a new ripple of the New York rap canon, offering a murky and ghostlike vision of one of rap’s most well-painted cities.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misquoted a lyric. The lyric has since been removed for clarity.