Brian Ennals and Blockhead Announce Boatshoes, Share the Funky New Single “Aldente”

Brian Ennals has linked up with longtime New York underground mainstay Blockhead for a new collaborative album called Boatshoes, and the first taste of it makes one thing pretty clear: this pairing has some real chemistry. After the Baltimore rapper’s 2023 project A City Drowned In God’s Black Tears with Infinity Knives earned a rush of praise in certain corners of the internet, Ennals now sounds like he’s pushing into a different lane with a producer who has spent decades making sharp, off-kilter rap records for the underground.

Blockhead, of course, is no stranger to this world. He first built his reputation alongside Aesop Rock, and the two still collaborate regularly. Over the years, he’s stayed visible across the New York scene, turning out beats for generations of arty rappers, including a 2023 cut with a title as loud as the lineup itself: “Now That’s What I Call A Posse Cut Vol. 56” featuring Bruiser Wolf, Danny Brown, billy woods, and Despot.

Boatshoes brings Ennals and Blockhead together with guest spots from Fatboi Sharif, ShrapKnel, and Defcee. In the announcement, Ennals said he knew the bar was high the moment he realized who he was working with. “This is a dude that’s made albums with Aesop Rock and billy woods, so I was aware there was a level of quality I had to reach,” he said. “Not to toot my own horn, I think I did… It’s the most fun rapping I’ve had in a long time. Block’s productions were funky as fuck, almost pop, but still totally totally rap. They didn’t sound like anything I’d ever heard.”

Blockhead was equally direct about how the project came together. “Brian met the challenges of writing to beats like this at every turn,” he said. “We ended up with an album that sounds nothing like anything we have done before. And when you’ve been doing this as long as I have, that’s a rare accomplishment.”

The lead single, “Aldente,” backs that up. The beat is dense and layered, with more harmonica in the mix than you’d probably expect, while Ennals keeps circling back to the hook from Baltimore rapper 2Pac’s “Hail Mary.” And yes, even if Pac only spent a few childhood years in Baltimore, the city still claims him.

Below is the Boatshoes tracklist, which also includes another installment in Blockhead’s long-running “Now That’s What I Call A Posse Cut” series.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Aldente”
02 “Roll Call”
03 “Pass The Yayo”
04 “Bareback”
05 “Let It Burn (Like Usher)”
06 “Yellow School Buses” (feat. Mike Mayo & Defcee)
07 “Wet Noodle”
08 “Signed Sealed Delivered”
09 “Soy Boy”
10 “Now That’s What I Call A Posse Cut Vol. 87” (feat. Fatboi Sharif, Shrapknel, & DeathIRL)
11 “Smirnoff, Via A Straw”
12 “Shyne”
13 “Wonderwall”

Boatshoes is out 7/17 on Phantom Limb.