Something has always unsettled me about rappers who can’t fit a phrase within a bar. Perhaps it was the decade of music training that I received in elementary and secondary school; typically, I can’t seem to get over emcees with lazy flow.

For that reason, the first couple of listens of Evidence’s second album were pretty painful for me. The nickname that the Californian emcee goes by of “Mr. Slow Flow” is about as subtle as the rest of the point-blank lyrics he penned for Cats & Dogs, which is a fact only accentuated by the crisp deliveries of collaborators such as Slug from Atmosphere and Rakaa Iriscience from Evidence’s group, Dilated People.

In spite of that — and Evidence’s monotone pitch — Cats & Dogs turns out to be a stellar album worthy of a listen. The emcee consistently delivers thoughtful lines, although he certainly won’t receive praise for the complexity of his prose. Evidence tends to say it like it is, without the creativity and intellectual wit of other artists like Shad. But there’s something about his words, often biographical, that don’t let the listener turn the track off.

High-end production, beat-making and scratching also added an intriguing dynamic to the otherwise standard style of rap. Three years of working on this album paid off on that side of the equation, with producers such as The Alchemist (a longtime collaborator) and DJ Premier helping out. Cats & Dogs isn’t adding anything drastically new to the scene (and Evidence admits it), but it’s still deserving of a couple of spins.