Want to track Alc’s evolution as a beatmaker-qua-beatmaker without distraction from outlandish Action Bronson punchlines or the sharp elocution of Roc Marciano’s empire-building? Sure, you’ll miss out on how his production complements a wide array of rap voices, but immersing yourself in his Rapper’s Best Friend series (now up to six volumes) is instructively entertaining. On this first volume you can already hear his big-money sound take a turn for the idiosyncratic, as even of-their-moment glossy beats done for artists like Scarface (the golden synths of “G-Type”) and Dilated Peoples (the chipmunk soul “Back Again”) balance speaker-rattle momentum with drama-heightening, just-a-bit-weird melodic loops. By its five-years-later sequel he’s mastered a whole host of other modes — sinister, glamorous, panic-attack stuff that elevated him throughout the early ’10s — so this is a valuable snapshot of a phase few realized was actually transitional.

– Nate Patrin