Chicago rapper Dreezy, a drill-adjacent upstart from the South Side, put competitors on notice when she ripped through a remix of Nicki Minaj’s “Chi-Raq,” proving herself a capable stand-in. Since seizing her moment, she’s grown into quite a well-rounded artist, appearing alongside veteran conscious rap guru Common, drill holdouts Lil Durk, Lil Bibby, King Louie, Sasha Go Hard, and Katie Got Bandz, and electronic duo AlunaGeorge, earning a record deal with Interscope in the process. Poised for a breakthrough, late last year she tested the waters with From Now On, a superbly-rapped EP that made use of her dexterity with nimble verses that swiftly navigated sounds from the producers of the moment—Metro Boomin and Southside. It was to-the-point, trap-centric, and a bit one-note, but it had just enough legs to build buzz for a proper entrance. A few weeks later, Dreezy released her lead single, the surprisingly smooth, Jeremih-featuring crossover jam “Body,” which seemed to suggest a more versatile effort was in store.

No Hard Feelings is Dreezy’s major-label debut, and it makes good on that promise. It’s a fully-formed offering that seamlessly balances her more rugged raps with pristine pop songs (sculpted in “Body”’s image) and tender slow jams. There are just enough drill bits to pacify Schizo era fans, but the album moves and turns on more subdued songs delivered in singsong and a few straight-up R&B joints. Dreezy is as accomplished a vocalist as she is a lyricist, with a glossy tone that rises as painlessly into falsetto as it does a playful squeal, and she slots in songs that sound like they could be a fit on a Sevyn Streeter album, like the infectious “Wasted” and the slow-burner “Break the News,” with more traditional bangers and deep cuts.

Skits help pull together a loose narrative that finds Dreezy at the center of a love triangle with a philandering boyfriend and a new would-be beau. The album drops the listener into a changeover—she’s put off by her boyfriend’s latest escapade and open to a replacement just as another suitor comes along—and the sequencing shuttles listeners through this story-in-progress with snapshots and vignettes of the trio’s interactions. But No Hard Feelings never goes out of its way to force-feed us these romantic entanglements. It isn’t a concept album—the songs don’t exist as building blocks for a relational drama—but they are carefully assembled to unspool the plot while making individual statements about love, sex, and compatibility, and they provide insights into Dreezy’s own life. The transitions are purposeful and well thought out.

The intro is a phone call from Dreezy’s friend alerting her that her man is with another woman and it segues into “We Gon Ride,” a song about Day Ones that functions as a vehicle for explaining that bond and transporting them to the cheater’s house. When they get there, he claims the girl is his cousin on a skit before “Spazz” drops in, and its central message—“On any nigga, I spazz/ On any bitch, I spazz”—lends itself well to the scene. The whole album is arranged this way. Details in songs interlock even when the songs themselves differ. It’s ambitious and well-executed, especially in the run from “Body” to “Afford My Love.” This is a byproduct of talent, work ethic, and circumstance aligning; Dreezy couldn’t have made this album a year ago, and the scope of the project shows just how much she’s grown and how far she’s expanded her repertoire.

Dreezy got here unleashing her flows, hunkering down into backloaded rhyme schemes and pressing her weight into them. It’s easy to hear Minaj’s influence on songs like From Now On’s “Money Printer,” where she flexes into pronunciations, and G Herbo’s on any number of older songs, barreling downhill and muscling through verse on sheer intensity. But stylistically she’s becoming independent of those sounds, adding more variety to her game and finding a voice that is distinctly her own. Her punches are direct and effective and still beholden to her forebears, but now she’s opting for a style that suits her even better: a chronicling approach that makes use of her sharply pivoting flows. She eases longtime listeners into the transition with drill-indebted tunes like “Spazz” and “Bad Bitch,” which rely heavily on her punchline acumen (on the latter: “Mean-muggin’ in the Ghost, they yelling Beetlejuice” and “Second time getting top from the same nigga, call that shit a recap”). But that’s merely one sliver of her identity, and she opens up when trapped in love’s throes (On “Ready,” she raps, “I’m really everything you think I am boy, it ain’t no hype/Young, independent, with a bankroll, I can change your life”). She’s expressing more now than she ever has.

Dreezy credits Interscope with broadening her palette, expanding her sound and testing her range, and No Hard Feelings makes a strong case for the nearly extinct A&R position. The album maximizes Dreezy’s talents, sets her up to hone her songcraft, and brings out her personality. Guests are all hand-selected for their roles: T-Pain plays the perfect partner for the duet “Close to You,” Wale is the ideal candidate to play the adversarial male voice opposite Dreezy on “Afford My Love,” and Gucci rides shotgun with ease on “We Gon Ride” (“MAC 11, I ride, keep shooters at every session/I’m ahead of my time, a blessing to the present”). Contributions from Bloodpop (Grimes and Justin Bieber), Terrace Martin, Cardo, and TM88 all find ways to push Dreezy’s limits. The slow strut of “Ready” provides an opportunity for more careful penmanship. She slips from a tottering singsong into a even slipperier cadence on “See What You On,” inspired by the swaying, sax-led tempo. On “Don’t Know Me,” Dreezy asks, “You don’t really know me, do you?” But on No Hard Feelings, she finally gives listeners a chance to.