You can count on the hype, AZ/Primo single. Seriously, you can bank on it. Back to Basics cashed, DJ Premier turns around and splits the difference between last year’s stellar “The Come Up” and something that Masta Ace would love to rap over; phaser keyboards set to stun are the needed surprise, made familiarly Primo with the break scratches, the jazz vibes, the drums we’ve heard from dude a hundred times already. In his review of Masta Killa’s “Brooklyn King,” Clayton Purdom drops some knowledge: Premier is one of those producers who can make a beat which feels “effortless,” that “just exists, unblemished and true.” That sounds a bit gushy, maybe, unless you’re a hip-hop head and know the feeling that a good Primo beat can give -- a feeling you can live on. “The Format” is our current exhibit.

Like the song, the video’s almost perfect in its simplicity. Attached to his borough, AZ comes with a bevy of Brooklyn backdrops; he’s separated from the city by close focus, separated from the viewer by long shooting, and so the result’s a visual-spatial representation of a NY rapper’s classic position, middle-man between streets and listener. Director probably didn’t think about it that way, and, no, I don’t know what’s up with the tricked-out neon graphics, but it all looks and sounds pretty cool. Those shots where mute fireworks burst in the black as illuminations slide off the sides of AZ probably do more to describe the track’s mood and verve than any word-stream I could manage.

AZ’s rapping is both characteristically excellent and, in a way, incidental. His flow’s as natural as butter on your bread, keys in your pocket; he has always been at one with this kind of song and this kind of beat. The biggest tragedy of AZ’s career is that DJ Premier doesn’t produce nearly enough of it.

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