Fatboi Sharif & Child Actor – Crayola Circles
Fatboi Sharif‘s reassurance, “dry your eeeeeeyes” in the opening of “Assassination Tapes,” the first full song on Crayola Circles, isn’t all that, well, reassuring. The New Jersey rapper’s sing-speak carries more than a hint of mischief which, when paired with Child Actor’s minimalist drone loops, turns to menace. It’s all a bit off—which for Fatboi Sharif means it’s exactly as it should be. Backed by phantasmagoric production from Steel Tipped Dove on 2023’s outstanding Decay, Fatboi Sharif weaved in and out of dimly lit asylum halls, crafting a stunningly disturbing whole from seemingly disparate and disconnected parts. And with 2025’s Let Me Out, Driveby provided Sharif’s dystopian visions with a suitably dissonant layer of static and distortion. Comfort, as far as Sharif is concerned, is an elusive thing.
Crayola Circles turns down the temperature a bit after a few straight years of conjuring hellfire, though much of the credit goes to producer Child Actor, whose versatile subtlety works just as well in the context of the cacophony of ELUCID’s Revelator or the understated introspection of Open Mike Eagle’s Neighborhood Gods Unlimited alike. Juxtaposed against something like Decay, Crayola Circles is more immediate, more approachable, built on a starker, warmer foundation, more jazz than industrial or dark ambient. Yet it’s not a sense of security you can count on, always on the verge of disintegration even when at its most accessible.
The horrors are subtler, perhaps, but Fatboi Sharif still paints with a surrealist brush, his stream-of-consciousness imagery often difficult to parse on a granular level but coming together like puzzle pieces to reveal a larger picture, like the visions of Tupac working a minimum-wage shift at McDonald’s in “Assassination Tapes” or syringes on playgrounds in “How to Disinfect a Live Grenade.” But sometimes the message is considerably more direct, as with the opening hook in the uneasy dark jazz lurch of “Chemo Crystal Ball.” “My mama told me I was crazy/The system told me I was crazy/Religion told me I was crazy,” Sharif murmurs, only to turn it around with a sick punchline: “But not more than youuuu.”
The chemistry between Sharif and Child Actor feels both seamless and natural, the added breathing room allowing for more of the curious details to come into focus. Sharif unpacks a harrowing tête-à-tête with the sandman over the hypnotic bassline of “Night Terrors,” the album’s closest thing to a late-night summer groove in all its psychedelic haze, cycling back to its chorus of “See it all from the bleeding knife, loud scream when I dream at night.” Actor dims the lights a little with the smoky jazz backdrop of “Crayola Circles of Creativity,” giving Sharif ample space to work some free-association alliteration: “I speak in crayola circles of creativity/Candelight dinner, categorized on the corner, captivated by chaos.” But it’s not until “ANGER,” deep into Crayola Circles‘ second half, that Sharif trades his woozily understated delivery for a frayed growl. That it happens only after a longer-term wind-up and ample period of relative stability makes its unhinged abrasion all the more effective.
A statement released with the album’s announcement draws attention to the fact that Crayola Circles features no guests, no interludes—”There might not even be songs.” Its transient moments of cryptic imagery do frequently feel like fever dreams, but in its lean, focused 27 minutes, Crayola Circles offers a set of hip-hop abstraction that carries an undeniable musicality regardless of how strange it gets. More eerily nuanced than outright blood-curdling, Crayola Circles isn’t so much a step into the light as it is a haunting from a more flattering angle.
Label: Backwoodz
Year: 2026
Similar Albums:
