Brian Ennals & Blockhead's 'Boatshoes' Is Funny, Confessional, and Kicking the Year Into Gear
Brian Ennals has spent his career mining humor out of genuinely heavy subject matter, and on Boatshoes — a full collaborative album with veteran producer Blockhead, out on Phantom Limb — that balance finally gets a beat palette wide enough to match it. Across thirteen tracks, Ennals digs into addiction and depression with a wit that outlets have compared to Danny Brown and early Eminem: funny first, devastating a beat later.
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Blockhead moves fluidly between dusty, dank basement boom-bap and brisker, brighter rhythms without ever losing a cohesive identity — “Aldente” opens the record on a layered G-funk bounce before things get considerably stranger.
The Spatial Dynamics: “Pass the Yayo” is the psychedelic peak, all warped textures and an inventive, almost sing-song chorus structure that Blockhead builds the whole track’s tension around.
Standout Performance
“Soy Boy” is Ennals at his sharpest — Bandcamp Daily and RapReviews both singled it out as the album’s hardest beat and its most coherent lyricism, landing real political and social commentary without losing the record’s loose, conversational tone.
Why It’s Certified
The guest list does real work rather than padding a tracklist: “Yellow School Buses” pairs Ennals with Defcee and Mickie Mayo for a drug-themed cut that swings between absurdist humor and nihilism, while “Now That’s What I Call A Posse Cut Vol. 87” stacks Fatboi Sharif, ShrapKnel, and DeathIRL into one dense, generous showcase. “Shyne” offers a jazzy, uplifting exhale before “Wonderwall” closes the record out. Tighter and more focused than Ennals’ earlier work, and better for it. Certified great.