Fly Anakin Is At His Most Personal on “Frank” (Album Review)

Fly Anakin is a 27 year old MC from Richmond, Virginia who’s been making music for nearly a decade at this point. However, he first caught my attention in 2018 after being featured on Ankhlejohn’s magnum opus Van Ghost. & started to gain even more exposure a little over a year ago when he & Pink Siifu dropped their collab album FlySiifu’s. But coming fresh off some promising singles that Fly Anakin has putting out for the last few months, it was all leading up to his 6th full-length album over here.

“Love Song (Come Back)” is a string-laced opener getting in his romance bag whereas the soulful “Dontbeafraid” with Henny L.O. finds the 2 talking about entitled cats setting the game back. “Sean Price” comes through with a lavish tribute to the fallen Boot Camp soldier of the same name with the help of Evidence behind the boards leading into the appropriately titled “Underdog Theme”.

After the “Kenneth Cole Collections” skit, “WaxPoetic” comes through with a drumless acoustic loop talking about being a suburban dude now leading into Pink Siifu tagging along for the boom bap-tinged “Black Be the Source” talking about building & destroying. Nickelus F comes into the picture for the dreary “Ghost” getting in their hardcore shit, but then “Class Clown” returns to soul territory acknowledging that the only capping he does is shrooms.

After the “Bread” skit, “No Dough” talks about not doing shit for free anymore over a groovy Madlib instrumental while the orchestral “Grammy Snubnose” warns not to let him see his people switch. “Bad Business (Killswitch)” weaves in a moody boom bap beat dissing MCs who be moving backwards while “Poisonous Primates” goes into funkier turf talking about killing his ego.

After the “Fly Away” skit, the penultimate track “Telepathic” with Big Kahuna Og finds the 2 tossing the mic back & forth with each other pretty well over a cloud backdrop & “Bag Man” returns with some angelic background vocals talking about how it don’t take much to be the man in the climate that hip hop’s in today.

I’ve been hearing a lot about this dude in the last few years & I can definitely hear why after listening this album. It’s touching that he flipped so many soul records in honor of father & even lyrically, there are points where he’s getting a lot more personal than he did on his previous efforts.

Score: 7/10