But Only After You Have Suffered

More impressionistic and genre-fluid than most hip-hop-derived beat tapes, yet more tangibly headnod-driven and constructed around the possibilities of rap flow than your typical experimental jazz release, this breakthrough beatmaker-as-bandleader album by the Angeleno drummer Jamire Williams is an absolute must for people seeking out the trippier intersections of both worlds. There’s a stretch on But Only After You Have Suffered that speaks to a powerful pull between earthly concerns and spiritual epiphanies while using as many stylistic routes as he can find to get there, segueing from the sandblasted gospel-gone-rock dirge “Just Hold On” to the glow-voiced affirmations of interstitial “Take Time, Look Up (Jawwaad Speaks),” bridging its way into Fat Tony and Zeroh coolly muttering heavy metaphysical koans over one of the best beats Madlib never made on “Safe Travels.” By the time the second half’s reckonings with divinity sink in — especially with the respective voices of Corey King and Lisa E. Harris piercing bright rays through the trembling melodic haze of “For the Youth” and “Pause in His Presence” — you’re left with an experience that feels intensely personal just off its idiosyncratic daring, but inviting for that very same reason.