For an artist with only one full-length to his name and no substantial commercial success to date,
Royce da 5'9"
went through a lot of
rap
-star drama, enough to fill his second,
Death Is Certain
, to the brink with his thoughtful reflections. It's a very personal album, shadowed heavily by his much-publicized beef with the
Shady Records
camp. If you don't know the story, here it is in brief: once billed as the next big thing from Detroit, following
Eminem
's breakthrough,
Royce
went from someone to no one as his big label deal with
Columbia
fell through, followed by an ugly war with
and company that culminated in July 2003 with a street fight that got both him and
D12
member
Proof
arrested and booked with concealed weapons charges.
thankfully has moved on and put aside his beef, for the most part at least. There's not a pointed dis to be found here (sans a few subversive ones about someone whose "wife is sniffin'"), just a lot of well-produced tracks with a refreshingly optimistic outlook. In fact,
sounds a lot like
Cormega
circa
The True Meaning
(2002) -- a talented, once-hyped rapper looking to get his career back on track after a fruitless war that had unfortunately sidetracked him and left him empty-handed. Like
,
is a solid, lucid album chock-full of personal insight and forward-looking. As such, it's cathartic --
has a lot of frustration to vent, and he does so at length here, reestablishing his once-lauded credentials in the process:
"Beef"
and
"Bomb 1st"
are seemingly conclusive epilogues to his war with
Shady
("I'm against all this name-calling sh*t"),
"I Promise"
"T.O.D.A.Y"
are humble musings of self-awareness ("Am I a young MC or a one-hit wonder?"), and
"Throw Back"
"Hip Hop"
are mission statements of integrity (the latter another on-point
DJ Premier
production). There's nothing lighthearted about this album -- it's dead serious from beginning to end, accentuated all the more by
Carlos "6 July" Broady
's chilly throwback beats, which grace roughly half the album. In the end,
is certainly an underground album for the heads, one that's intended to clear the smoke and set the stage for the big comeback. ~ Jason Birchmeier