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Album Review -- Royce's Death is Certain

The 5"9' wordsmith loses the commercial bullshit and drops a strong album.

by Douglas Passion | 2004.02.22

Like any good Nas rant, Royce the 5’9” is angry and confused. He should be. Between his talent and long-term affiliation with the zillion record-selling Eminem, success should have been a plum ripe for the plucking. Instead, Royce is back in Detroit, wondering what went wrong.

We’ve laundry-listed his gaffes before: that comical cameo on the Willa Ford single, an odd tryst with The Trackmasters, a banishment from Dr. Dre’s Chronic 2001, the squandering of an Eminem appearance on the schlocky “Rock with Me”. Since then, he’s had a plateful of mad cow with D-12 and even pitched a few quasi-disses at the Shady one. Royce has also shown the rare ability to combine the aforementioned lapses in judgment with remarkably bad timing – his last album included songs with The Neptune, Clipse and Twista, none of which anyone ever heard. If not for moments of mercurial brilliance like the Premier-assisted “Boom”, we would have written Royce of as a has-been/never-was a while ago. “I played myself for radio play,” he admits on his new album, Death is Certain, “I never dance, but the skill itself is a second chance.” Word the fuck up.

Royce has always been adept enough at twisting together multiple-syllable word strings to come off competently on almost every verse, but his last album was bogged down by a peat moss-like amalgamation of unoriginal subject matter and clichéd hooks. On Death is Certain, Royce sticks mostly to two topics: his relationship with the music industry and how many people he plans on killing. These themes occasionally overlap. Although he doesn’t try anything particularly creative, his utter abandonment of the tepid commercial aspirations that gutted Rock City makes Death is Certain an immediate improvement over his previous effort.

Royce wasn’t sniffing the ass of album sales or radio burn with Columbia and the Trackmasterz behind him; giving up the Mr. Baller façade in favor of underground underdog was a necessity. Sure, the subject matter of tracks like “Throwback”, “Gangsta”, “Hip-Hop” and “Beef” is about as unique as a blowjob skit (which he fortunately does not include). But at this point, we’re not asking Royce for conceptual high art – just skillful lyrics over quality beats. And he comes through, to his spouse’s apparent disapproval. “My wife don’t like my album,” he raps on “Something’s Wrong with Him”, “it’s way too dark for women/ she say it sound like I hold grudges, she’d rather listen to Joe Buddens/ no disrespect, a’ight, but fuck a party.”

While some albums with anti-industry rhetoric are defiant middle fingers of rebellion, there is a sadness that pervades Death is Certain. There are violent threats aplenty, but the stench of defeat is in the air. At least in public, Royce has given up the dream of being a platinum-selling rapper – he’s just rapping because it’s the best way he can express himself. For an artistic standpoint, his isn’t a bad thing. An album of tormented self-loathing is infinitely more interesting and unique than the stale ballerisms he spouted on Rock City. Due to his honesty, Royce is a more of a sympathetic character than the average rapper who whispers his last words from the deathbed of a label that is Koch. “People think I’m arrogant when they don’t know me…the shit is not fair, picture yourself standing in front of a mirror, trying to change what’s not there” he says on “I Promise”.

Death is Certain is solid from front to back, but there are a couple traits Royce could lose before his next album. As on all of his other material, the constant references to Eminem continue unabated. We know, man. There is not one motherfucker planning on dropping their fifteen ducats for Death is Certain who doesn’t know of the relationship between you guys. Hence, starting Death is Certain with an interpolation of “Lose Yourself” is not necessary. There are also times when the 5’9”’s cadence gets a bit Slim-like. Alos, Jay-Z would be proud of Royce’s newfound penchant for quoting other people’s lines. If not a biter, he’s a rider for himself and others – adapted lyrics come from the archives of luminaries such as Biggie, Tupac and Redman. Despite these petty grievances, Royce has proven that he can make a very good album. There aren’t too many artists out there capable of making a truly great album; Royce, for all his blunders, still is in that rarified category. He just needs to do it.

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