We’ve seen artists use beef to promote their records. We’ve seen them abstain from traditional promotion altogether. Perhaps the most effective vesicle for promoting the dope album you’re about to drop though is…bars. Irrefutable, undeniable, unstoppable BARS.
Always respected, but never enough to make it into the pantheon of elite emcees, Royce Da 5’9″ has been on a warpath of late, lyrically slaughtering everything in sight. Royce’s new album Layers is due out on tax day, and in the weeks leading up to its release, a steady stream of fire has been flooding the computers and smartphones everywhere.
At age 38 and on his sixth solo LP, but first in five years, Royce appears to be in a place where he’s ready to express more about his personal life; the single “Tabernacle” is evidence of this, as Royce details the events surrounding his son’s birth, his grandmother’s death and meeting Marshall Mathers for the first time, all of which took place on the same day.
We’ve seen Royce go bar for bar with some of the game’s most gifted lyricists. His work with Slaughterhouse is well known by hip-hop heads; his back-and-forth rhymes with The Fire Marshall are the stuff of legend. If for no other reason than self-preservation in the booth, Eminem seems to bring out the best in Royce, but the Detroit native appears to have brought that same Bad Meets Evil intensity to Layers. In fact, he’s even brought that same intensity on records that won’t make the album.
Royce recently put out a video for “Which Is Cool“, where with a dry tone, he denounces fake emcees who don’t write their own rhymes, hipsters, and pretty much everything that’s become synonymous with the new era of rappers. He then assaulted a StreetRunner track for nearly seven minutes, and “savaged” an AntMan Wonder beat for nearly five. Each of these three songs are likely to appear on Royce’s free EP entitled Tabernacle: Trust The Shooter, due out ahead of the album.
Royce’s propensity to spit complex rhymes without compromising ease of understanding has always set him apart. Each of these records provide that, along with his trademark illustrative dexterity behind the mic. Don’t misconstrue this piece’s title (that’s been happening a lot lately at HHSR): there’s a short list of rappers that are putting out this quality of work at this exact moment, but with each new Royce rhyme, that list is slowly being distilled down to a precious few.
Layers is 17 tracks and includes production from Jake One, DJ Khalil and S1, along with features from Pusha T and Rick Ross. If you respect true artistry behind the mic, you’ll probably want to pick up Nickel Nine’s new one on April 15.