Happy 10th Anniversary to Roc Marciano’s debut album Marcberg, originally released May 4, 2010.
Roc Marciano didn’t invent cinematic street rap. Instead he dissected and deconstructed it, and rebuilt it into something akin to high-art, equal parts luxurious and devastatingly bleak. And his influence is huge.
Without the Marciano blueprint there would be no Westside Gunn or the rest of his Griselda crew, or countless other rappers bubbling on the indie rap scene right now who are making Marciano-esque hip-hop. He has earned the respect of everyone in the game, including rappers way more famous and successful than he is. He’s the consummate artist, the rapper’s rapper, and without a doubt one of the most important artists to emerge so far this century.
If the Notorious B.I.G., Mobb Deep, Raekwon and Jay-Z were inspired by larger-than-life movie criminals like Tony Montana and Frank White, Marciano is more like the filmmaker behind the camera. He weaves screenplay-worthy characters into his lyrics, directing their actions with purpose and meaning, and scoring instrumentals that create a gritty sense of realism like a great cinematographer who spends days selecting the right film stock to shoot with. This is music as cinema and a call back to the grimy underbelly of New York seen in the best films of the 1970s; evoking everything from the early work of Scorsese and the blaxploitation era, to the snuff movies and slasher flicks of the grindhouse circuit.
After an uneventful start as a member of Busta Rhymes’ extended Flipmode Squad, Roc Marciano first appeared on most people’s radar as part of the group The U.N. who released the excellent UN or U Out album in 2004. It brought critical acclaim and respect from the underground and helped clear the way for Marciano to unleash his debut solo album Marcberg in 2010. In my opinion, for what it’s worth, 2012’s Reloaded was the moment when Marciano fully hit his stride and achieved elite rhyme icon status, but Marcberg was one hell of a debut.
Marciano raps his ass off on Marcberg with relentless verse after verse from start to end, but it’s never overworked or tiring to listen to. The verbiage may be plentiful, but Marcberg is also very efficient and economical with not a single moment or line wasted. Marciano’s delivery is effortless and precise, where every verse is succinct and hits hard. Even the lyrics that might at first seem like throwaway lines or random streams of consciousness have been finely crafted and thought-out. This is an artist who takes his writing very seriously, with layers that can take several repeated listens before you fully take in what has been said. There are honestly too many lyrical gems on Marcberg to list, but for me some of the best storytelling happens on “Raw Deal,” “We Do It” and “Thugs Prayer.”
The vivid and fully fleshed-out characters of Marcberg live in a world of pimps, street hustlers and desperation. It’s a familiar universe visited by the many albums, novels and movies that came before Roc Marciano, but few writers have been able to portray it as authentically as he has. He even manages to put a fresh twist on some of rap’s most well-worn stories and tropes, like on “Jungle Fever,” where the world of the drug dealer is told as a metaphorical relationship with a woman.
In true auteur style, every single song on Marcberg is produced by Roc Marciano himself. The sound here resides somewhere between the best work of the ‘90s boom bap masters and the stripped down, sparse and claustrophobic beats Marciano has since fully mastered on every album since 2013’s Marci Beaucoup. Marcberg’s tightly clipped loops are the perfect soundtrack to Marciano’s narratives, synced expertly in a way you only get when a rapper is also the producer. Marciano’s complete control over the album is also why almost no one else appears on Marcberg except for Ka. An incredible artist himself, Ka’s contribution to “We Do It” marked the start of several collaborations between the two like-minded artists, and their long-awaited full-length album under the name Metal Clergy will hopefully manifest itself one day.
Roc Marciano has released seven albums since Marcberg and it’s not an exaggeration or hyperbolic to say that every single one of them has been nothing short of exquisite. You’ll no doubt be seeing Albumism tributes to all of these as the years tick by.
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