On his latest, the Long Island MC exults in the kingdom he’s created within underground rap.
Roc Marciano knows his influence looms large over rap and is tired of waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. He’s said as much in interviews and in bars: “What good is the credit if you can’t get it while you alive?,” he growls on “Tom Chambers,” a song from his last studio album Marcielago. Released in 2019, Marcielago is the closest the New York rapper-producer has come to explicitly staking a claim to his legacy on record. The impact of his minimalist production style and surrealist pimp chronicles was an open secret within the modern hip-hop underground and between power players like JAY-Z and ?uestlove alike for years. His foundational 2010 solo debut Marcberg celebrated its 10th anniversary this past May and, following Marcielago’s chest-thumping, long overdue flowers were delivered.
Marciano’s own faith in the value of his art is well-documented. He’s been selling his albums at premium prices through his website since 2017’s Rosebudd’s Revenge, circumventing streaming services for at least two weeks at a time to reap what he sees fit. Mt. Marci, his tenth studio album, is no exception. If Marcielago was the Thanos snap on his decade of underground hip-hop innovation, then Mt. Marci is him celebrating the fruits of his labor the best way he knows how: by putting his head down and continuing to churn out colorful wordplay over finely chopped loops.
Many of the album’s beats sound as though they've been ripped from the deleted scenes of a Melvin Van Peebles film, with Marciano as its slant rhyme-spitting antihero. “Where I’m from, hammers ring/Can’t be mishandling things/I’m not a square but yeah, my hands is clean,” he says on “Baby Powder.” On “Pimps Don’t Wear Rabbits,” he manages to take something as simple as putting on jewelry and make it sound superhuman: “My diamond chain’s a climate changer/I’m playin’ with weather.” The worlds he creates are rich with mise en scene.
Marciano’s humor is underrated. Rap thrives on hyperbole, and while many rappers sell their otherworldly tales with their chests puffed out, Marciano moves in the exact opposite direction. His deadpan delivery makes his metaphors even funnier, like a mob boss stumbling into an open mic night at a comedy club. He doesn’t just cook cocaine well, he came up “scraping the bowl like an eight-year-old.” His sex is so wild it’s only comparable to the GS Boyz’ Stanky Legg dance. He claims his haters play his music in secret like they’re watching porn. Because he never alters the grain of his voice, his jokes slide by without losing the feel of the ceramic bowl or the glow of a computer screen in the dark.
As funny as Marciano can be, his world is still largely a grim one. The close calls and brief flashes of life that dot his songs—images of an addict smoking out of a Country Time lemonade can, glimpses of a father who was “a wino but he was fly tho”—balance his cartoonish eye for detail with pathos. “Two diamond crucifixes I wore for all the times that I’ve been double-crossed,” he remembers over the elegant piano keys of the absurdly titled “Steel Vagina.” Moments like these illuminate the person underneath the white fur and cream-colored suede Yeezys.
Whatever mood Marciano is trying to convey across Mt. Marci, the beats help steady his directorial lens. Per usual, Marciano handles the bulk of the album’s production, crafting all but one-and-a-half of the album’s 16 songs (“Downtown 81” was made by Seattle polymath Jake One and the first half of “Baby Powder” was made by Pro Era stalwart Chuck Strangers). Songs like “Wheat 40s” and “Steel Vagina” are vintage Marci, driven by pristine, barely embellished loops that glimmer with chandelier luster.
As tight as he is within his comfort zone, Marciano experiments to great results. He’s largely abandoned his trademark lack of percussion, with the majority of the songs featuring drums of some sort. “Covid Cough” turns a guitar wail and off-kilter drum patterning into the wonkiest beat he’s ever created, accented by a fiery ScHoolboy Q verse (“I got nothin’ to prove/I sold 20, made 20, I’m in the shadow of who?”) "Wicked Days" is an eerie mass of blips and hums more reflective of Flying Lotus and Death Grips than the grainy mid-’90s aesthetic he usually prefers. Somehow, with little musical direction, Marciano corrals these sounds with nothing but his mid-tempo rasp.
Much like genre-defining artists before him such as stylistic forebear (and album guest) Kool Keith, Roc Marciano lives in his own world; we just visit him there. His claims of mastery over his lane of hip-hop are bolstered by the quality of his songs. His sound is bombastic yet refined, a delicate balancing act inspiring artists both large (Earl Sweatshirt, A$AP Yams) and small (Ka, Stove God Cook$). He’s worked hard over the last decade, and he’s feeling slightly more appreciated for it: “I ran it up without a loan/I guess you could say I’ve come into my own,” he says on the title track. Mt. Marci is a proclamation from a throne of his own creation.
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