You know you’re really out the proverbial loop when you’re as well acquainted with any which rapper’s pseudonym as you are with their real name. And while I’ve never even so much as heard of 6LACK – né Ricardo Valdez Valentine – previously, his teaming up with BANKS on the broody In Between is reason enough to get to know both the man and the moniker intimately. Because this particular cut – a bonus number from Valentine’s FREE 6LACK full-length of yesteryear – has all the hallmarks of a contemporary R&B classic à la Brain long before it, its smouldering, minimal production nicely offset by a fiery (if rather excessively vocoded) duet that’s lyrically reminiscent of so much of BANKS’ impassioned canon. Regardless, and arguably righting my own wrong, this one’s set to stick itself on a perennial loop for the foreseeable…

FREE 6LACK is available now via LVRN / Interscope Records.