Following up their album “Good Luck With That”, named as one of Bandcamp’s 10 Best Hip Hop Albums of 2017, Career Crooks (Small Professor & Zilla Rocca) are back with their sophmore release “Never at Peace”.

In the four years in between albums, Small Professor has carved his name into stone among the elite of hip hop producers while Zilla Rocca has become an in-demand podcaster, rapper, and producer, both working with legends, peers, and up and coming artists.

“Never at Peace” examines the life of indie artists with a shit load on their plates: fatherhood, creativity, surviving the Trump era, becoming more empowered as small business owners, hustling the craft to pay more bills, staying on peoples’ minds, failing to clear your own mind, the Sixers, the algorithms, Philly’s relentless growth in crime rates and new residents….

A lot has happened.

Career Crooks keep moving on.

Small Professor evokes classic east coast boom bap with something more bleak (“Never Answer When It’s Private”), more grandiose and bombastic (“Do What You Been Doing”), more layered and thrilling (“SP Situations”, “SP Bumper Cars”), and more to the point (“I Know a Guy”).

Zilla Rocca touches on the danger of nativism, the powers of The Native Tongues, the long journey to stay a rapper while everyone hangs it up with age, and why the dirt, the filth, the scum, and the shit littered all over his native South Philly makes the best grim fairytales for working class humps looking to keep you out.

The legendary Blueprint lusts for Fuck You Money on “Dame Dash Taught Me”. Curly Castro and PremRock emerge as ShrapKnel to remind y’all why Wrecking Crew ain’t to be fucked with on “Crew Nautilus” and “Spiral Book”. And iAlive steals the show on the David Bowie credo “You Can’t Steal From a Thief” while summoning psych rock gods of yore as Donovan Days on “Sleeping Heads”.

“Never at Peace” is the sound of local always over national.