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Royce Da 5’9" - The Bar ExamAlbum Review by:
John Burnett
Monday, April 23, 2007
 Lyrics don’t sell in hip hop; at least not nowadays. And having skills just isn’t enough to make you a millionaire in rap. I don’t like it, but let’s keep it real, that’s what it is. Royce Da 5’9 is a living testament of the above stated. When I mention his name, you may scratch your dome and say, “I’ve heard that name before but where’s dude been?” Well after he dropped his debut LP Rock City, he experienced record label limbo, went under the radar to ghostwrite for Dre, beefed with D-12, wrote for Diddy and then got locked up; not to mention dropping some mixtapes and LPs during that stretch of time. Fresh out the bing, Royce, Statik Selektah and Preemo put together The Bar Exam a prelude to Royce’s upcoming LP Street Hop.
Rhyming on certain beats, like Jay-Z or Nas tracks per se, makes a statement to me. That statement is: “Yo, I’m that good or better” and that seems to be the tone Royce is taking on “Royce Is Like” when he rhymes over Preemo produced “Nas Is Like” track by Nas and “So Ghetto” by Jay-Z. Royce doesn’t shame the beats though delivering heat with quotables like “Either my gun gon’ bang or Imma come harder/I run water on y’all lames, I’ll unthaw ya’/Y’all wanna be the kings of rap but son smarter/I rather run some game on one of Run’s daughters.” Mid-track, Royce seamlessly transitions from Nas’ to Jay’s track with seemingly no effort doing both beats justice. On “Feelin It 07” Royce rhymes over the Jay-Z classic “Feelin’ It.” He adjusts in topic and cadence picking up both Jay’s content and cadence from the original which is impressive. Other emcees just input their lyrics into the jacked beat; superior artists study the cadence and topic and re-use it while trying to up the ante with their new lyrics in the old framework. When an emcee puts the formula together properly, it makes you question whether the new emcee used it better than the original. Borrowing yet another Jay beat (“A Million and One Questions”) on “A Million More” Royce addresses all the questions. He talks about his DUI, record labels (Bad Boy and G-Unit) bidding for him, his borrowed Range Rover, his ghostwriting for Puff, his past beef with Proof and, Nas trying to sign him to his new imprint simultaneously using the track to fill in parts of his flow. Dope.
About midway through, Royce gets real gun happy with his subject content. It starts with “What You Call It?” continues with “Go Gettem!” and “I’m Strapped.” I like gangsta rap as much as the next man but it becomes repetitive quickly. It seems Royce is dealing with some frustration perhaps. Royce rhymes with a lot of anger at times on the mixtape. It immerges as violent subject content in tracks but when he channels that energy effectively, it’s hard to imagine many outrhyming him. On “Gone (The Return of Malcolm)” rhyming over the Kanye West produced track (Cam’ron’s “Gone”), he uses that anger to address societal issues like “blacks against affirmative action” which he compares to “the war in Iraq while Saddam is hanging” insinuating both are asinine. On this track, he tries to position himself as the revolutionary gangster and does so spewing forth well knit commentary and the bars he kicks in the last minute of this track are bananas.
Royce does his thing over a variety of beats on 'The Bar Exam'. In an exhibit of his versatility, he flows over a Christina Aguilera track on “Gorilla Pimp”, flows over the down south bounce of Mim’s breakout single on “Tell You Why I’m Hot,” the soulful sounds of Kanye and classic tracks of Preemo. And he does it effectively never sounding awkward. It becomes apparent early that he really puts time into his lyrics really delivering a lot of heat throughout this mixtape and packing quality into the majority of his verses. He covers a lot of ground topic wise and manages to have a flow for ever occasion. Royce is a throwback of emcees of days past that really respected the craft of rapping and practiced it. The only flaw I would in this mixtape is the excessive gun talk. Royce falls back on that topic frequently. Other than that, The Bar Exam does a good job of reviving the promising potential that fans once saw in Royce Da 5’9.
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