Two years after an enormous year in which he released his last project, Isaiah Rashad is back. He had his breakout as an XXL freshman, and then seemingly disappearing from the music scene.

“The Sun’s Tirade,” his new LP, doesn’t waste a second before addressing this. The opening track, “Where U At?” is a voicemail from Top Dawg Entertainment co-president Dave Free, in which he is giving Rashad a pep-talk about the need to finish the album. This is the first taste we get of the kind of self-awareness that Rashad pours into his music, not sparing any self-directed punches along the way.

The album kicks off nicely from here, with a couple smooth tracks including one of my favorites, “Free Lunch” (one of the singles off of this tape).

After building up the album with these easy-going tracks, Rashad changes it up with some grimier, harder hitting flows and instrumentals. “Bday” in particular stood out, delivered in a mopey tone over a dark instrumental, introducing us to a darker side of Rashad that he carries through this part of the album.

The album began to lose some of its momentum in the last few tracks. While still decent songs, some of these tracks felt like a repeat of the first chunk of the album, and a slightly more derivative one at that. For instance, “Dressed Like Rappers” almost feels like a track from his fellow TDE rapper and mentor Kendrick Lamar.

However, Rashad manages to deliver a few good additions to the album in this stretch. Most notable of these is “Don’t Matter,” in which we get Zay rapping over an exciting breakbeat, an effect change of pace (in spite of a pretty uncomfortable hook that nearly ruined this track for me).

On top of outstaying his welcome with these last few tracks, I couldn’t help but feel something was missing from this tape. After hitting rock bottom with substance abuse, one could imagine Rashad must have something to write about that would blow his old material out of the water.

Instead, he never really reaches any personal breakthroughs the way he did on “Cilvia Demo” with the outstanding confessional track “Heavenly Father.” In spite of these problems, Rashad proves he is alive and kicking on this tape, and I look forward to hearing what he releases in the future.

I’m going to give this one an 8 out of 10.