Float On opens with its titular intro—a soulful reprise that sounds like it exists out of time, awash in otherworldly vocals and moving strings that lay the groundwork for The Lytics’ dreamy, dense, and blasted third album. Blending the group’s hard-earned 16-bar mastery, their penchant for booming, all-consuming, sometimes psychedelic beats, and a can’t-keep-us-down attitude, Float On captures the technicolour spectacle of life through hip-hop enlightened and soaring to bright heights. It’s the record people will remember as the one where the sun rose on the electrifying Winnipeg group—four brothers with clearer eyes, fuller hearts, and a more powerful command of their craft than ever before.

Nothing comes easy, least of all art, and family adds an even more contentious dimension to the process. You can’t pick your siblings, after all. Over the past three years that saw Float On slowly come together, The Lytics embarked on some difficult but successful European tours, promoting an album they’d rushed out to escape a label situation. With Float On halfway done, they scrapped the entire thing and started from scratch, because they’d learned if you’re gonna do something, you best do it right. There were highs, too. They headed to New York City to record with the Beastie Boys’ Mike D as part of Converse Rubber Tracks, and participated in a Juno Masterclass. But after all that, with skills sharpened and finally feeling ready to begin anew, the real work got done in a South End Winnipeg basement, the same way it has since they started doing it in 2008. Like Ashy raps over soulful, jazzy piano and a tip-tapping ride cymbal in “Day Dreams,” “What we want is the truth, what we put in the booth.”

Through Andrew.O’s heavy-hitting flow, that truth feels like pummeling, rolling thunder as he comes through hard over the stratospheric “For My People,” pledging himself as a man of the masses. With Ashy, it explodes stormy like sheet lightning on the dramatic and blissed out “Glow” as he meditates on everything it took to get to where they are. Munga drops it like acid straight into the bloodstream, serving up illumination and pulling back the curtain on the spaced-out “Sunshine.” And B-Flat wields the truth like an incensed warrior on pumped-up rager anthem “Friction,” raining wild-eyed, verbal napalm all over the celebrations, ensuring that the only thing left intact at the house party is the party. The Lytics run amok through the history of hip-hop, nodding to legends like The Pharcyde, The Fugees, Tribe, and Souls of Mischief while bending, twisting, and shapeshifting sound until they’ve arrived at ‘til-now-undiscovered sonic destinations—places firmly in the 21st-century, pushing into the future.

In the album’s final verse, elder Lytic B-Flat lays his feelings on the group’s dedication to their art bare: “Tried to make this thing go, but it’s hard still/bones hurt, money tight, got my heart still.” There’s never been any talk of giving up, though. Despite setbacks, obstacles, and the hard times that life is built to deliver, The Lytics will forever be out to tell a tale, “of human beings trying to be heard on the third rock from the heat.” The whole thing—this hip-hop machine out to capture messy feelings and heavy thoughts and the wildness of just being alive—is a family affair. But by the time those familiar, wistful strings surge back just one more time for Float On’s curtain-closing moments, you’ll realize you were part of the family all along.