AOTY #3: Roc Marciano - Marcielago [2019]

Welcome to my Album of the Year highlights! I’ll give you a little run down with a brief history to start, show you the tracklist (with the tracks in bold being my favorites) with all of the featured guests (if any), give you some descriptors that might make you more inclined to check it out, and I’ll provide links to stream/buy the project down at the bottom. Enjoy!

Roc Marciano is one of the best rappers of all time; period. Every project he comes out with is a masterclass in confidence, rhymes, and a rough-and-tumble pimp lifestyle, bringing the three together over suites of beats that test the limits of minimal funk/soul sampling. This shit is like Superfly meets Masta Killa. In all of those ways, I think Marcielago stands over all of Roc’s other projects, operating at a level of refinement and polish that puts him in on an entirely different level in my mind. Every track has a beat built around an immaculate idea, every bar feels crafted with care by a psychopathic thinker, and every feature (of which there are numerous; many more than his usual albums) feels like it adds to the Marciano canon spectacularly. There is even attention payed to a sense of sequence, a roller coaster of moods that feels purposeful. This album is #3 because Roc pulls out all of the stops to come through with a damn-near flawless album in his already airtight discography; an album that would be a crowning achievement for a lesser artist, but is a jewel among jewels for Marci. Also, like I mentioned at the beginning of this process, I fucked up last year by not including December 2019 in my 2019 list; I’m making up for this now by including this incredible project on my 2020 list.

Tracklist

1. Select Few

2. Molly Ringwald

3. Choosin Fees

4. Richard Gear

5. Ephesians (Feat. Ka)

6. Tom Chambers (Feat. Knowledge the Pirate)

7. I.G.W.T.

8. Puff Daddy (Feat. Stove God Cooks)

9. Boosie Fade (Feat. Westside Gunn)

10. Bomb Shelter (Feat. Willie The Kid)

11. Saw

12. SAYLAVI

13. God Loves You (Feat. Stove God Cooks)

14. Joe Jackson

15. Legacy

Roc Marci (left), Knowledge the Pirate (center), and Ka (right), are three artists who trust each other almost exclusively whenever it comes to features on each other’s projects. The sheer number of combined classics these three have would make your favorite rapper blush.

Recommended if you like:

Havoc, sample-based production, Raekwon, very few drums, Hus Kingpin, pimp lyrics, Oh No, fast and dense flows, Ghostface Killah, hilarious jokes mixed with serious gangsta-isms, DJ Quik

Here’s my original write-up of Marcielago:

Roc Marciano - Marcielago [2019]

↓ Listen to Marcielago ↓

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music