On their collaborative new album Who the Fuck Is Chris Spencer??, underground Chicago rappers Vic Spencer and Chris Crack appear wholly ignorant of all recent trends, as if they've emerged untouched from a late-'90s time capsule. The record goes against the popular grain in every sense, from the production—sample-based, replete with chiming vibraphones—to the duo's explicit allegiance to capital-L Lyricism. It's a concept album that seems less concerned with its concept—Chris $pencer is ostensibly a fictionalized fusion of the two MCs—than in world-building, in craft, and devotion to an acerbic, pointed sensibility. Who the Fuck Is Chris Spencer?? draws attention to lost traditions, evoking forgotten and under-explored tributaries of rap—the freestyle- and battle-rooted styles of Lyricist's Lounge CDs and classic hip-hop radio (Stretch and Bobbito, Sway & King Tech). It plays not on what we remember from the past, but on what we've forgotten.

Both Vic and Chris' solo work is worth exploring, but together, their powers are magnified. These are not radio records; they are not "bangers." Their songs take up space, as if the duo were less interested in persuading listeners to jump on the bandwagon than in drawing a line between their Backwoods-smoke-filled living room and the one outside. Needless to say, their songs are also not paeans to positivity. (Vic: "Y'all got an A plus for suckin' balls/Leave your ass blind in your house, left you touchin' walls.") Yet they are invigorating, the kind of music which gives voice to all our righteous suspicions that the wider world is smugly disingenuous—an especially resonant, if unpopular, sentiment in an age built on friendly alliances. Chris enjoys a good conspiracy theory, and Vic is the self-described "rapping bastard." Both rappers revel in playing the heel. Where other artists seem obligated to veer experimental or populist, they choose neither.

Yet the album is bold, forward-thinking, and singular nonetheless, because it treats hip-hop as a lineage inherently worthy of celebration, with no other justification needed. Like high school cafeteria battles taken to their outer limit, Who the Fuck Is Chris Spencer?? focuses on the art of rapping not as a technical exercise but as a freewheeling session of shit-talking. This is the dozens on steroids. Songs are shaped by verses rather than the other way around. Their flows never fall into familiar patterns, nor do their twisting narratives, which weave in and out like a boxer, defiantly unpredictable. On "What's Saturday?," Chris Crack's tale of breaking and entering suddenly goes left, as he fantasizes about being smothered by "big girls," before glossing over the story's expected climax ("we got the money, nobody was hurt") and hitting the highway. The story arc is incidental. This is lyrical rap which reclaims the word "lyrical": no longer a trap for those who would fetishize arbitrary formal techniques, it is reborn as a synonym for freedom—where verses operate by their own volatile logic.

The closest thing to a "single" on the album is "No Biggie," a record which flips the same Screamin' Jay Hawkins sample as Biggie's "Kick in the Door." Even there, the underlying "pop" impulse of the DJ Premier flip is cut into jagged shards, while Vic's corkscrew baritone and Chris' raw, high-pitched sneer move at hard angles. The album's main compositional framework comes not from the immediacy of the pop song, but from the smoky, expansive comfort of its atmosphere. Chris and Vic's world is never entirely exposed to the light: The tranquil "Cement," for example, with its melodious chorus from C. Rich, makes one feel as if they've nodded off in a beanbag chair at the recording session, lyrics filtering in while flitting in and out of consciousness.

Their work expresses a contradiction: Chris $pencer cares too deeply while not giving a fuck. Something important is at stake, and yet Chris and Vic live precariously, as if truth and provocation are the only things worth holding onto. If there's a theme which unites Who the Fuck Is Chris Spencer??, it's one of perpetual skepticism: distrust of ideologies, of consensus, of hype, propaganda, publicity, and bullshit. This oppositional spirit is best captured by a younger generation in the sardonic, cutting perspectives of Earl Sweatshirt and Vince Staples. But unlike the stoned mumble of the Odd Future-affiliated, Vic and Chris' vocals carve through beats with a wiry, manic, animated energy—best described in the sampled interview with Chicago rapper Drunken Monkee on the song "Drunken Monkee": "It's a lot of niggas that can rap over ill beats but they don't know how to bring that shit to life. And that's what we do, we bring the motherfucking beats to fucking life, dawg."