Fatboi Sharif, an outsider among outsiders, remains consistently unpredictable. The Jersey rapper’s output has snowballed as he’s worked with more producers, landed on higher-profile releases, and simply become more and more prolific, with Crayola Circles being his fifth release in the past year, if you could believe it. But even within that year, no two records sound alike.

It seems Sharif prefers to keep his circle small for at least an album at a time, this time working exclusively with producer Child Actor, who made his own stellar contributions to recent albums like Navy Blue’s The Sword and the Soaring. Larger-than-life as a figure like Fatboi Sharif may be, Crayola Circles stands as a surreal trip down both artists subconscious’s where the lack of initial impact might be what makes it such an exceptional project within their discographies.

Many descriptors of Child Actor’s production paint what could be a generic image: “jazzy,” “lowkey,” and even, as much of a meme as it’s become, “drumless.” This all applies to Crayola Circles, but Child Actor’s beats are arguably more invested in building an atmosphere over which Sharif can spew his fragmented poetry. Crayola Circles consequently plays much stronger as one 27-minute piece with ebbs and flows.

This is reinforced by the inclusion of the single “Chemo Crystal Ball,” which stands out in the runtime for both its smoldering, brooding production alongside some of Sharif’s most straightforward songwriting to date with, “My mama told me I was crazy / The system told me I was crazy / Religion told me I was crazy / But not more than you.” Easy as it is to disregard Sharif’s writing as overly esoteric, this winds up a rare instance where the directness doesn’t pay off, coming off both immature and on the nose.

While Sharif’s style hasn’t changed much, a newfound tenderness comes through for some of the most evocative writing of his career. Over melancholy, winding keys on “Recognition,” he raps, “Late-night road trips, hide his gun in the ocean / Them letters made my eyes water from a distance.” Like most of Sharif’s work, lines often sound like the answers to questions too morbid to ask. Even without the full context, Sharif leaves the trail of breadcrumbs leading to the emotionally twisted, morally backwards world he inhabits.

Child Actor indulges Sharif’s darker tendencies with a song like “Cold Day in Hell,” where Sharif comes off more like the Crypt Keeper than a rapper, backed up by a dingy soundscape in place of a conventional beat. The rest of Crayola Circles nevertheless rests comfortably within the underground’s fringes, but Child Actor distinguishes himself among his contemporaries with some of the liveliest compositions heard within the genre.

Loops go beyond drumless, wavering in and out of existence, with the floor dropping out from under them right as a cymbal was about to crash. Maybe it sounds toothless at first, but a trained ear witnesses the textural depth within each of these beats. Sharif even occasionally backs away from the mic entirely, like on the back half of “Crayola Circles of Creativity,” where it becomes an impromptu jazz track whose momentum sweeps you away so easily that by the time the song ends, you forget that you were even listening to a rap record.

Everything about Crayola Circles is standard Fatboi Sharif, what with the brevity and the non-stop rush of lyricism. Only a few spare moments truly sound like something that works outside of the tracklist, but Child Actor’s unassuming production quietly builds one of the rapper’s most immersive records to date, like watercolors dripping onto a canvas, creeping their way over the fibers until a beautiful, impressionistic work of art reveals itself with time.

And it’s for this reason that I’m feeling a light 8.