In 2020, Sean Leon lost his brother Kingsley; In Loving Memory presents nothing less than an unfiltered and unflinching look into his grieving process. Conceived as the soundtrack to a companion film, House of Leon, the Toronto rapper’s fourth album is a fever-dream blur of codeine-dripped rap, lysergic R&B, after-hours confessionals and off-kilter interludes that vividly captures the shell-shocked and surreal sensation of losing a loved one. But in his dark night of the soul, Leon surrounds himself with an all-star support group that includes long-time compatriot Daniel Caesar (on the serenade “The Glade”), Jessie Reyez (on the flamenco-inflected ballad “Dishonored”) and an uncredited Ye, who produces a revamped version of the swirling orchestral rap soliloquy “Oxygen” (originally slated for Ye’s Donda 2). And as much as In Loving Memory is steeped in the messiness of mourning, it also features some of Leon’s most grandiose and audacious gestures to date, like the six-minute set piece “Equinox”, which initially seems poised to follow Lil Yachty’s Let Start Here. into the psychedelic sunset, but magically mutates into a fierce, trap-triggered statement of purpose.