If all the regionally and stylistically disparate MCs Alchemist’s worked with all have a unifying factor, it’s that they’re all deeply aware of the maneuvers made in the name of class mobility — though in Armand Hammer’s case, Elucid and billy woods see said mobility as an out-of-reach brass ring at best, and more often than not as an elaborate con. Haram dropped when the long-tail impact of the previous year’s Shrines was still being felt, and the brilliant abrasions of that album’s abstract-friendly beats are followed up by one of Alc’s moodiest production slates to date — tendon-stretching tense (“Wishing Bad”), breathtakingly cosmic (“Black Sunlight”), and deep-focus in its wooziness (“Chicharrones”).