Chief Keef’s 2015 roast “Thot Breaker” was all about having sex with some other guy’s girlfriend, about her role as a disposable means to emasculate said boyfriend, and about the vicious sport of it all. “I think I’m the youngest flexer on earth,” he proclaimed proudly, a remorseless victor.

The Thot Breaker mixtape was originally teased more than a year earlier as a playboy manifesto made in the song’s image, but like many long-awaited Keef projects—Mansion Musick, UFOverload 2, and Crashing Computers among them—songs slowly leaked out and official versions never came. When previews of rumored Thot Breaker tracks began surfacing elsewhere in 2014, it seemed like the wait for the tape was nearly over. The mixtape was eventually given a Valentine’s Day 2015 release date, with songs like “Fucked Your Ho” and “Thots Gone Crazy,” but it failed to materialize.

More than two years later, with that version of Thot Breaker now an afterthought for all but the most diehard Keef fans, the Chicago prodigy has returned to the title in surprising fashion with renewed vision and purpose. According to Keef producer CBMix, with whom he worked closely on the project, these are all new songs divorced from the original concept and context. In a bit of irony, the new and improved Thot Breaker is Chief Keef’s most romantic work; once merely a means to label himself the ultimate womanizer, he instead takes a 42-minute R&B sojourn, forging a project his contemporaries would make if only they could. The songs are carefully composed and finely layered. Inside them, he’s somehow evasive and affectionate in equal measure. It becomes the ultimate serenade for side chicks, a collection of half-ballads forsaking monogamy and reveling in the delight and confusion of short-term companionship. Never has an out-of-character moment felt more evolutionary, or more natural.

It’s telling that the new Thot Breaker cover art features a Barbie-esque figure stabbing the anthropomorphic heart from the original artwork (which seemed to represent Chief Keef, the eponymous Thot Breaker in question) between the eyes. Where early Thot Breaker cuts were apathetic and standoffish with Keef as the aggressor, these are almost genteel in comparison. “You thought that you had Turbo in your palms/You got trust issues, girl, you are not alone,” he sings on the intro. Before he was talking at women in songs, here he’s talking to them, if not to charm or comfort them, then to explain himself. So untangles this knot of feelings, assertive and doting in some instances, removed and apprehensive in others, but always engaging, and usually in conversation. It has been years since Keef was this charming, and this accessible.

Calling these “love songs” might be a bit of a stretch—after all, he does sing, “She wants me to be her man/I can’t, baby, I’ll break you” on “Grab a Star,” holding firm to his original position—but there is certainly an intimacy and a tenderness to many of them. The women he propositions are more often subjects than props, and there’s an elegance to the way he sings to each one that feels personal and loving. Don’t misunderstand: there are still plenty of angry boyfriends (and husbands) on the revamped Thot Breaker, and he’s mostly noncommittal even in the most intimate situations, but this is way more Mr. Steal Your Girl than “O.P.P.”; there’s some wooing involved.

A certain juvenile innocence is captured on Thot Breaker that escapes even the best and lightest Lil Yachty songs, and it’s, frankly, enchanting, especially coming from a drill architect. No one saw this coming. The art for his dancehall jam “Can You Be My Friend” was a hand-scribbled elementary school-style note with boxes to be checked, and the lyrics follow suit. On one of the more upbeat cuts, “Whoa,” he runs into an old flame, taking a brief stroll down memory lane, before attempting to win her over again with basic conversation starters. “Baby, I’m gon’ treat you better/I can be the sun in your rainy weather/Let’s just get together,” he pleads. “Slow Dance” moves with the clumsy wobble of a first dance at a junior prom, but his vocal runs are endearing nonetheless. “You My Number One” is easily the sweetest song he’s ever written.

When he strays from the cutesier songs, he takes dramatic turns, reimagining sad boy R&B on tracks like “Couple of Coats” and “Drank Head” and revitalizing bop with “Going Home.” Every song is an oddball assemblage of parts (particularly “You & Me,” with its wobbly synths, disembodied vocal plugins, skittish hi-hats, and snaps), but each one functions on multiple levels, and no song feels out of place. His last mixtape, Two Zero One Seven, was scatterbrained, a low stakes sampler for Keef’s wildest and weirdest musical inclinations, but the ambitious Thot Breaker shows what Keef is capable of when focused: There is no sound he can’t hone and master, no challenge too risky. Like Future’s HNDRXX before it, the mixtape dares to mix matters of the heart and pleasures of the flesh, a feat of rap balladry. Who says tough guys can’t be sensitive?