Roc Marciano (New York's rapper and producer Rahkeim Meyer)
self-produced Marcberg (2010), an album devoted to old-school hip-hop
music with minimal production and focus on the rapping.
The relatively rugged sound, the icy slow beats and the relatively bland
style of rapping created the feeling of romanticizing the urban world
of twenty years earlier.
Perhaps influenced by Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Part II (2009),
Marciano impersonated a flamboyant "Godfather"-style mafioso via an atmospheric
stream of consciousness
(Snow, Ridin' Around, Panic, Pop).
The elegant mafia boss and the mean street poet were refined with less drama on
Reloaded (2012), notably in
Tek To A Mack,
Flash Gordon and
Pistolier.
This time he got a bit of help from the Alchemist, Q-Tip and others,
and this may explain why the atmosphere was less gloomy.
On the other hand,
the 15-song Marci Beaucoup (2013), with a lot of guest rappers,
was overlong and sloppily (self-)produced. It should have been just
an EP with Drug Lords, Psych Ward and little else.
The mixtape The Pimpire Strikes Back (2013) was actually more
affective in embellishing his cinematic self-tribute.
He finally employed outside producers for Rosebudd's Revenge (2017),
or RR1,
a fact that improved the general sound but also somehow stifled the mix
of words and beats. Burkina Faso is the notably exception.
RR2 The Bitter Dose (2018) was inferior to RR1 despite
the exotic beat of Saks Fifth and the
noir atmosphere of Kill You.
The brief Behold a Dark Horse (2018) was wrapped in a
decadent and almost hypnotic atmosphere, still clinging to his
minimalist style of production, with peaks of pathos in
Congo and
Trojan Horse (with Busta Rhymes).
Kaos (2018) was a mediocre collaboration with DJ Muggs
(save The E Train).
The
15-song Marcielago (2019),
mostly self-produced, was another overlong self-celebrating autobiography
that rarely achieved the sinister tension of his first two albums
(Puff Daddy and I.G.W.T. (In God We Trust) being notably exceptions).
