Brian Ennals & Blockhead Boatshoes

Veteran NYC producer Blockhead teams up with rising Baltimore MC Brian Ennals (usually seen in his acclaimed partnership with Infinity Knives) for vital, skillsharing new album Boatshoes, a canny and celebratory ride through irreverent and truth-telling bars alongside classy, master-level production.
“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,” writes Baltimore rapper Brian Ennals. “Not to toot my own horn, I think I did.” A debut collaboration between two heads of hip-hop - one established, one ascending - Boatshoes provided a creative challenge that the pair met head on with verve and confidence. Ennals is part of the irresistible Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals duo whose three records have attracted significant acclaim in rap music and beyond, but working with Blockhead meant a diversion from the incendiary, vitriolic, substance-loving stomp of his usual format. “It’s the most fun rapping I’ve had in a long time,” he tells us. “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 - aka Manhattan’s Tony Simon - began his career in the late 90’s, a young producer able to keep pace with the breakneck rhymes of the era’s most exciting underground rap talents. Over the subsequent decades, his CV has expanded to include production for the likes of Aesop Rock, Illogic, Murs, Cage, Armand Hammer, and billy woods, as well as releasing music under his own name and with numerous collectives. And yet, Boatshoes is still a departure. More experimental and more centred in sound design than previous works, the collaboration and Brian’s influence pushed him to stylistic juxtaposition and timbral exploration. “Brian met the challenges of writing to beats like this at every turn,” he says. “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.”
Opening track “Aldente” begins with funk-inspired synclavier as Ennals lets loose with the kind of nihilistically comic swagger that characterises his flow, a cohesive and narrative battery that references cocaine, blues, impenetrable Baltimore street slang, alcoholism, MF Doom, and anything else that crosses a widely tuned radar. Testing Blockhead to match this omnivorous range, the production is deep and heavy-hitting, at its crescendo sultry sax giving way to a swampy harmonica solo that soars above the mix.
Later, “Let It Burn (like Usher)” proves the pair have the agility to pin genre to disparate genre to captivating results. A deft jazz-inflected beat of double bass and dotted drums gives way to 70’s cartoon organ and Ennals sing-rapping his deceptively bleak imagery, delivered, as always, with an anarchic and knowing grin. As with the entirety of Boatshoes, Ennals and Blockhead’s middle ground makes for an intoxicating unison.
“Pass the Yayo” draws in insistent synth lines, hot guitar licks, drum breaks, and acrimonious social criticism, while the melancholic string samples and jubilant Tron synthesis in “Wet Noodle” offer a new pace, a crestfallen and confessional tribute to narcotic-and-burn-out fuelled impotence.
Boatshoes is the debut collaboration between the two artists, released worldwide by Phantom Limb on July 17th 2026. The album artwork features original illustrations by Tariq Ravelomanana, aka Infinity Knives.