You couldn’t get far in Brooklyn last summer without hearingPop Smoke’s “Welcome to the Party.” The Canarsie MC’s window-quaking single gave the borough a bonafide hit and signified the arrival of its burgeoning drill scene on the charts. Much of the excitement stemmed from Pop’s alpha-dog charisma, manifested in a voice that sounds like he gargles gravel every morning. His swagger has only grown since then; he’s already proclaimed himself the king of New Yorkon record despite being a total unknown before last year.

The 20-year-old has managed to back it all up thus far; hedropped a thrilling debut in July and its follow-up,Meet the Woo 2, provides more gritty drill music you can clench your jaw to. It all sort of sounds like “Party,” but it gets over on sheer maximalism like its predecessor did, with just enough deft touches to keep things exciting.

A perfect example of this is the opener “Invincible,” a fierce slab of bravado over a teetering violin beat. With his gruff bark, Pop paints himself as a warrior à la300, except he’s marching through a room full of unfamiliar dudes somewhere deep in Brooklyn. As with most of his work, the song contains a few shaky lines (“I’m feeling horny, and I shoot like Robert Horry” stands out here), but Pop’s lyrics aren’t built for close inspection; they work best hurling out of a big speaker system.

He says as much himself on the following track, a collaboration withMigos frontmanQuavo, when he threatens on the chorus, “How about I shake the room?” The song’s heavy beat, supplied by “Party” producer 808Melo, demonstrates the UK beatmaker’s sonic growth; a soft vocal sample and a swerving bass line fill space more subtly than the brazen bass hits of their breakthrough. The energy is more haunting and meditative than the the white-knuckle ride ofVol. 1.

But it’s all centered around aggression, of course. On his verses, Pop usually can be heard asking some poor soul to take things outside or threatening more sinister acts of violence, like on “Christopher Walking,” when he declares that he’s going to “tie that boy up like a cowboy.” His grim boasts are usually delivered without wit, but Pop’s bluntness occasionally leads to slivers of humor, as on “Get Back,” where a judge snaps, “Why you actin’ like a dick?” at him.

Meet the Woo 2 starts to slow on the back half, which is made up of more bare-bone instrumentals, as well as material that’s already been released, including, inexplicably, “Dior,” a single offVol. 1. Pop’s voice holds more than enough weight to carry a track, but he operates at one breakneck speed, never adding much variance to his flow. Thus his songs typically needsomething—a melodic layer, a unique bassline—or they start to bleed together. That’s the case with songs like “Mannequin,” which is fabricated around a paper-thin sample and runs out of momentum midway through, and “Dreaming,” a song that’s almost entirely low end with no hint of a melody.

Pop’s detractors on social media often point out how his songs sound too sparse or similar. But if they were to step outside in NYC, chances are they’d encounter a car nearly rattling its rims off with his music. That means the drums and bass will continue to sit high in the mix, his flow will remain militant. For the most part, the recipe still works brilliantly.