Descendants of Cain

Descendants of Cain is the fifth solo studio album by American rapper and record producer Kaseem "Ka" Ryan. It was released on May 1, 2020 via Iron Works Records. Recording session took place at Virtue & Vice Studios in Brooklyn. Production was handled by Ka himself and his frequent collaborators DJ Preservation, Animoss and Roc Marciano. It features a single guest appearance from Roc Marciano. Critical reception Descendants of Cain was met with widespread critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 85 based on four reviews. The aggregator Album of the Year has the critical consensus of the album at a 80 out of 100, based on 4 reviews. AllMusic's David Crone wrote: "Descendants of Cain proves an exceptional listen. Pairing Ryan's sublime lyricism with organic production and a precisely constructed concept, the MC's fifth project is a superb statement piece from one of rap's most ingenious poets". Paul A. Thompson of Pitchfork wrote: "It includes some of the most striking writing of Ka's career—the knottier verses and the blunter ones, too—and is utterly immersive, whole lifetimes of fear and pain and death and regeneration condensed into 33 minutes". Tim Sentz of Beats Per Minute wrote: "He may do all of this DIY, but it comes across with more heart than a lot of the tourists of the scene, and it shows in his powerful lyrics just how far he's come in this world". Robert Christgau called the rapper "a matter-of-fact realist" who has "never been averse to recollection or commentary, and this album assumes a didactic stance he puts across", and went on to say: