This is soul food, an audible feast, a form of mental science, and a collection of memories reminding you why you first loved hip-hop. It’s Home Sweet Home, the collaborative album from Rapper Big Pooh and Nottz: 13 slabs of soulful music and superb bars, released on Mello Music Group.

If “comfort food” is often invoked as a negative cliché, this contradicts that notion. As Chris Rock once said, “cornbread, there’s nothing wrong with that.” And Virginia’s Pooh and Nottz have slow-roasted a home-cooked Sunday dinner with extra butter.

Listen to “Welcome Home,” where Pooh paints the picture, “momma cooking up collard greens, fried chicken, macaroni, yams…you know the menu.” We see his brother firing up the grill, and his nieces and nephews playing in the yard.

It’s a much-needed respite from the falsehoods and conflicted identities wandering around outside. If you miss songs like Kanye’s “Family Business” or Goodie Mobb’s “Soul Food,” your only option is to press play.

“I'm most proud about how precise we kept it,” Rapper Big Pooh says. “It's an album that moves, glides in and out of songs, from one to the next. The topics are precise, the music thumps, and the length provides instant replay value.”