When Pop Smoke emerged late last year from the outskirts of Brooklyn, the first thing you noticed was his deep and raspy voice. Rapping entirely in ad-libs, hooks, and Instagram-ready one-liners, he sounded like a kid raised on a strict diet of Get Rich or Die Tryin’, Finally Rich, and Newports. His production, mostly from UK drill beat wizard 808Melo, mixed grimy, fast-paced drums with vocal samples ripped from UK garage and melodies that could score an anime. This stew of influences could only come from an artist raised on the internet, but Pop Smoke’s smooth arrogance and West Indian lingo remains distinctly Brooklyn. Now that “Welcome to the Party” is his borough's current summer anthem, he capitalizes on the momentum with his debut mixtape Meet the Woo.

Meet the Woo arrives at a pivotal moment for Brooklyn’s still-growing drill scene. Ever since 22Gz’s “Suburban” and Sheff G’s “No Suburban,” Brooklyn drill has lingered in the shadows of its Chicago and UK counterparts. Even as 22Gz signed to Kodak Black’s Sniper Gang and Sheff G became a phenomenon in New York City high schools, the prevailing theory was that these guys would never break out of the Northeast unless they switched up their style. Meet the Woo doesn’t overthink this dilemma; it’s just Pop Smoke taking nine swings at making the hardest, dirtiest shit he possibly can.

Previous singles “Meet the Woo” and “Welcome to the Party” lead off the mixtape and set its sinister tone. Of the new tracks, “Scenario” comes closest to recreating their magic: Pop Smoke’s voice is harrowing and Marvel-supervillain worthy, the beat a haunted amusement park. He doesn’t show a lot of lyrical creativity, but he can catch you off guard with his delivery: On “Better Have Your Gun,” he goes from ignorant bravado—“Shoot a nigga, go to jail for it/Cause I know I got the bail for it”—to demented and playful, whispering designer brands with a nightmarish echo on his voice. His limitations as a writer are exposed on “Dior”—outside of the mesmerizing hook, which doubles as an Amiri Jeans ad, he sounds stuck, repurposing lines like “Bitch I’ma thot get me lit” and throwing in a lazy and unneccesary and homophobic one-liner.

It might be occasionally unimaginative, but overall Meet the Woo injects life into a Brooklyn drill scene that was running on fumes. Pop Smoke just wants to cause chaos and dominate the playlists of every party before the NYPD inevitably shuts them down. He’s already accomplished this feat with “Welcome to the Party,” and something on this mixtape will follow in its footsteps soon. Maybe a Brooklyn drill rapper can break through without changing, after all.