Serengeti’s dedication to keeping his Kenny Dennis character evolving has been complemented by his broader-scoped observations of character, as though the incidental figures in Kenny’s life could (and, per Kenny’s wife Jueles, did) carry concept records of their own. And the addition of Ajai into the ensemble in 2020 made for a fascinating twist in the saga: a guy who, in the deepest trenches of hypebeast mania (“I hope this blue L’Effet matches my croquet/New Balance and Moncler collab with Dead Day”), briefly crosses paths with Kenny thanks to a misdelivered pair of Nike Air Force 1s and sees him off into a world of drop-obsessed derangement. Geti splits time between a front half led the smoother-voiced yet quietly, monomaniacally focused Ajai, whose tag-popping delirium scatters luxury name brands and half-remembered one-season trends with the feverish overload of circa-2000 Ghostface, and the familiar raspy Kenny Dennis holler that populates the album’s second half with his struggle to find a new phase in life (“I went away, shaved the stache, bought a Buick Reatta, cash/Got a job, a breakfast truck, 94 overpass”) en route to transforming into the ultimate hip-hop late-midlife crisis sufferer. It’s a bit unseemly — someone who had dreams of being a rap great pivoting to pseudo-Abloh Balenciaga-tastemaker striving — but it’s actually oddly touching hearing him finding a new phase and a potential new girlfriend (“Elaine”) as he tries to flip his personal memorabilia into easy cash for ‘90s-vintage fiends (“Jueles Trunk”). Pair that up with the contributions of another Kenny entirely — L.A. vet producer Kenny Segal, fresh off his 2019 level-up billy woods collab Hiding Places and delivering grimy zero-bullshit underground heat — and it sounds like an album of a tired old man getting pulled back from the brink of isolation and into the heart of something far weirder. Its spring ‘20 release date might’ve temporarily doomed it to relative afterthought status when the world’s attention turned to COVID-19 at the time, but in hindsight Ajai‘s the album that put the most fascinating twist on Kenny’s story and sustained Serengeti’s ability to further flesh out an already enjoyably tangled creation.