After Macklemore & Ryan Lewis partnered up to bring us the acclaimed The VS. EP in late 2009,  some fans feared a sophomore slump. Instead, the duo’s latest release, titled The Heist, plays like a veteran rapper’s ‘best-of’ compilation.

In a surprising turn for a rap album, The Heist provides an invigorating instance of straight talk. In direct contrast to the belief that ostentatious displays of wealth and bravado are de rigeur in rap (see Zadie Smith’s interview with Jay-Z), Macklemore, whose real name is Ben Haggerty, writes only what he knows. The record’s subjects range from the agonizingly candid “Starting Over,” where Haggerty struggles with the shame and disappointment of relapsing into cough syrup use, to the jaunty “Thrift Shop,” an ode to second-hand stores. Haggerty’s songwriting, however, is at its peak in “Neon Cathedral,” the young rapper’s elegy to the solace that drinking provides the hopeless. The theme of substance abuse is well-trodden ground for an artist whose most personal track prior to The Heist was “Otherside,” a song lamenting the cough-syrup epidemic stifling both hip-hop and his own life. The tone, however, never verges on the moralistic—Haggerty readily admits that he’s not a judge, only a storyteller.

Lewis, the duo’s producer and DJ, plays an invaluable part in this process. Since the two began working together, Lewis has coupled Haggerty’s tracks with some of the most captivating beats in recent memory, often employing dense, intricate layers, with his own skill on show in the instrumental “BomBom.”

With Haggerty’s incandescent delivery, and Lewis’ expert production, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis have brought out the most impressive record of 2012. Welcome to The Heist—you’ve pulled it off.