Not long ago, the rapper Chester Watson played a show in Brooklyn to support the release of his short, assured new album, Project 0. After the performance, he and fellow Nü Age Syndicate member Kent Loon met a guy from Italy who knew all the words to Watson’s song “Phantom.” “We were smoking, and he just started spitting it, and I was like, ‘Holy shit!'” Watson recounts. “He had this super strong Italian accent, too, so it was trippy.”

“Phantom” came out an eternity ago, in 2012. Watson was just 15 then, but you wouldn’t know it — this is impressive, dexterous boom-bap. The sing-song opening lines overflow pleasantly with alliteration, assonance and internal rhyme: “Being hella brash is the swag, bruh/Sittin’ back and I’m gettin’ ass in Nebraska/Different flask in a different class, rolling grass up/Nü Age only spitting facts.
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