Hailing from Long Beach, KXNG Crooked stands as one of the West Coast’s most venerable wordsmiths. Over more than two decades, Crooked has traded verses with bar technicians like Joell Ortiz (“Heat Wave”) and Ghostface Killah (“Buckingham Palace”), while flaunting a knack for quippy punchlines and dense multisyllabic rhyme schemes. Teaming up with Tech N9ne for “Let Me Get It,” he connects drug dealer imagery and dismissive boasts about rap game supremacy with tightly wound couplets, his words bouncing off each other like pinballs. On “Life of a Bandana,” he raps from the perspective of a bandana, giving humanity to a symbol of gang warfare. With a penchant for storytelling and the dexterity to crush a cypher, KXNG Crooked earns his reputation with each verse.