Black Milk and Fat Ray’s Reunion Track Hits Like an Ice Pick to the Bridge of the Nose

Any song from Black Milk and Fat Ray is guaranteed to sting: Ray’s ocean-deep baritone and slick wordplay counterbalance Milk’s beats, which veer from slushy samples to some of the only live-band rap production I can stomach these days. Though they’ve only dropped one full-length project together, 2008’s The Set Up, Ray has featured on enough Milk songs over the last 20 years to keep hope for a new collaborative record alive.

Last week, those prayers were finally answered with the announcement of Food From the Gods—and if lead single “Elderberry” is any indication, the pair are still very much locked in. Milk puts the MIDI keyboards and Gibson guitars back in the closet and returns to the dingy boom-bap he made his name on, coming out with a blend of wind chimes, trembling synths, and ghostly vocal samples set for a snow-flecked night in a graveyard. “This shit cold as hell, Black,” Ray murmurs at the top of the song, before matching the instrumental with frigid tough talk: “Niggas stay scared, play dead like chivalry/No dignity, boy/If you could write like me, a bitch’ll tie you to the bed like Misery.”

Detroit rap’s lineage stretches across every subgenre—from street rap to the introspective underground to more traditionalist bars-first rappers like Guilty Simpson and Eminem. Since his reintroduction as part of Danny Brown’s Bruiser Brigade in the 2010s, Ray has proven he can fit comfortably in all three categories. But his connection with Black Milk transcends time, region, and syllable counts. Their team-ups are intrinsic and hard-nosed, and “Elderberry” is a precision strike that will make you laugh after you’re done keeling over from the body blows.