Giving a release to the tagline of The Prelude adds all kinds of baggage. Evidently, Pusha T (government name Terrence Thornton) thinks his upcoming album King Push is good, otherwise he wouldn’t be sneaking out eight entirely new tracks before it is released. But the message is clear – this isn’t the geniune article, we have to wait for that to arrive. So the question hanging over this release is a fairly serious one: why should we be paying attention?

Because Pusha T is demanding it. There is no doubt that he has been around for a while – as half of the legendary duo Clipse he has been in the upper echelons of hip-hop stardom for 15 years now. But never before has he had such a cult of personality around him. Pusha has become one of the industry’s grandees with barely any solo output to show, but starting with 2013’s My Name Is My Name, and having been recently anointed as Kanye West’s heir to the throne at G.O.O.D. Music, he has been developing an individual reputation not based around celebrity and fame, but respect and acclaim.

Rappers doing it the other way round are squarely his target on this release, most obviously on ‘M.F.T.R.’, standing for ‘more famous than rich’, which positions Pusha as the genuine article; someone who has made his fortune outside of the music industry, and has done it over again within it: “Niggas talking it, but ain’t living it / Two years later admitting it, all them niggas is renting shit / They ask why I’m still talking dope, why not? / The biggest rappers in the game broke, voilà”. A major criticism levelled at him is that selling cocaine is one of the few things he’s able to talk about but it is an argument that comes from a patronising point of view: no matter the line of work, Pusha T was highly successful and has the status and money to show for it. Similarly anyone arguing that talking about drugs is restrictive or facile hasn’t heard the gut-wrenching, disturbing ‘Nosetalgia’ from Pusha’s last album or the brooding, cinematic ‘Keep Dealing’ from this release. His lyricism is straightforward but bold, and paints stark, dramatic pictures of a new icon in hip-hop.

The power is transmitted beautifully in the beats that support this record. They have a suprisingly retro quality, often harking back to a classic boom-bap style. Lead single ‘Untouchable’ is a track that could have been released years ago, and samples, very knowingly, Notorious B.I.G., a legend of a past era. The producers enlisted include some serious heavyweights, Timbaland, P. Diddy and Kanye among them, but they’re moving, oddly enough, out of their comfort zones and back to an era where their own personal brands hadn’t overtaken and overshadowed their music – just as in his writing, Pusha T’s chosen production feeds into an image of competence and authority, not egotism.

The sound of this album is uniformly dark and sinister, and it probably meant that any singles with the potential for radio play have been held back for the full album. There is definitely the sense that Pusha T is preparing for something; that his next album presents some kind of opportunity. A naïve reading might suggest that after a year dominated by West Coast artists (Kendrick Lamar, Dr. Dre and Vince Staples most notably) it’s time the East Coast responded. To a degree this is true, but it may well ignore the more important fact: hip-hop is saying more, and people are noticing. It may have taken an era defining album like To Pimp A Butterfly, but the pop mainstream is starting to recognise that hip-hop is doing new and exciting things with a pace and ferocity not really seen since the time of rap’s first great ascent into the cultural centre stage.

Running through all of these artists is a much deeper social and moral awareness. They have been the catalysts for a greater representation of African-Americans in political discourses. They have been the icons giving thoughtful and emotive responses to incidents of police violence. If there were ever a time to pay attention to one of the most articulate and powerful artists around, it would be now.