Knxwledge needs cantaloupe. So we’re waiting. Well, to be clear: I’m waiting. I’ve been waiting for over an hour to speak with Anderson .Paak and Knxwledge, the singer-producer duo who comprise NxWorries and make the kind of tongue-slick soul music that conjures 1970s-era Blaxploitation filcks like Super Fly and Cleopatra Jones. Our interview got pushed back due to “technical difficulties” with the audio setup at the Los Angeles office for Stones Throw, the label that is releasing the pair’s anticipated debut, Yes Lawd!, on October 21. So what’s a few more minutes. Knxwledge needs his fruit.

Here’s what we know so far: .Paak has been on a steep ascent since the summer of 2015, when he contributed heavily to Dr. Dre’s forever-awaited Compton. After years of toiling away in L.A.’s independent music scene, he released the funk-drenched solo record Malibu in January — with a carousel of features from ScHoolBoy Q, BJ The Chicago Kid, Rapsody, and The Game. What would follow would be just as impressive: a James Brown-caliber performance on The Late Show, collaborative work on Kaytranada’s fantastic 99.9% and Chance the Rapper’s equally-fantastic Coloring Book, and packed-out shows across the festival circuit.

Publicly, less is known about Knxwledge, the meticulous beatmaker who was born Glen Boothe. Though he’s dropped some 70 tapes and produced the contemplative “Momma” from Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, this album is for him a kind of coming out. There’s something holy about the whole of Yes Lawd!: it’s grounded in the tradition of gospel music and inspired by the sounds of Curtis Mayfield, D’Angelo, and “rap from Philadelphia street corners.” The music swoops, and finds .Paak coming face-to-face with personal hardship, one-time loves, and past demons. (A long way to get out here, but there’s a drought here, and I’m winning, he croons on “Livvin.”) Elsewhere, singing about women, .Paak toes the line between benevolence and braggadocio: “I fucked the sense up out your bank,” he proudly confesses on “Lyk Dis.”

Yes Lawd! is an album that feels alive, a living and breathing object that nods to the past while staying in the present (J Dilla’s Donuts is a sure blueprint). The music doesn’t necessarily take up the space around you so much as it moves through you. I believe in it completely.

But maybe that didn’t come through clear in our conversation, which I had over the phone with .Paak and Knxwledge earlier this week. Artists can be fickle, and often, there is a reluctance in their candor. The pair have spent almost two years on something that, one would hope, gets across the experiences and emotions they’ve endured during that time. They’re onto something bigger than big. And if this interview really isn’t that important to them, I get it. Because it’s about the music. First and always.

Minutes after I hang up our call, which is peppered with awkward silence, my phone buzzes again. It’s NxWorries’s PR team. Numbers got mixed-up. They were trying to get in contact with another journalist. “We just couldn’t get enough of you, J,” Knxwledge says to me before the phone cuts out. I want to believe him, but I don’t.