{"id":442903,"date":"2026-01-28T12:27:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T12:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/442903\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T12:27:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T12:27:15","slug":"roc-marciano-656-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/442903\/","title":{"rendered":"Roc Marciano: 656 Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a world where plenty of rap elders are content to roll out unchallenging<\/a> albums to steadfast fanbases, Roc Marciano<\/a> still knows how to hold your head underwater. Few rappers boast a style so enveloping and detail-rich, every verse stuffed with taunts, velour victories, and nagging regrets rendered in granular, Gordon Parks-like radiance<\/a>. New albums from Hempstead\u2019s veteran rapper-producer unfold like dispatches from a jet-setting uncle popping in for a visit: His tales scan as ridiculous, even a bit silly, but that just makes them more thrilling. He brings the same watchful eye to the loops he raps over as he does to the Patek on his wrist or the shiesty goons \u201cfertilized with horse poo\u201d for botching a hit, all (mostly) without spinning his wheels. After some high-profile<\/a> collaborations<\/a>, he\u2019s back behind the mic and the MPC for 656, his new studio album, which pushes into the sweet spot between the analog and the digital.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the first album he\u2019s fully produced for himself since 2013\u2019s Marci Beaucoup<\/a>, and doesn\u2019t stray far from his patented bare-bones chops and loops. Presentation is the biggest difference here: Many of these songs have an electronic sheen to them, the type of haze associated with an unprocessed beat ripped straight from the machine it was made on. Instead of sounding rushed or cheap, it adds an extra layer of menace to Marci\u2019s gaudy underworld. The organ, drum fill, and scant horn line on opener \u201cTrick Bag\u201d march with a distorted crunch; the synths powering \u201cChildish Things\u201d sound sourced from some long-lost Super Mario 64 Bowser dungeon. Other flourishes feel lightly touched up, tweaked until they\u2019re slightly lopsided: Take the bass strums on \u201cPrince & Apollonia,\u201d so fuzzy they land like percussion, or the subtle robotic metronome leading the swelling arrangement of \u201cYves St. Moron.\u201d This is a different shade of minimalism for Marci, harkening to the gutter \u201990s-era beatmaking represented by the dingy floppy disk on the album cover.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

A good chunk of the album bears these synthetic seams, but the rest further refines the diamond-cut aesthetic and elastic rhyme schemes Marci\u2019s made his name on since the early 2010s. \u201cI\u2019m not an actor, but I\u2019m in character,\u201d he says near the beginning of \u201cHate Is Love,\u201d keeping it real while continuing to blur fact and fiction. Mise-en-sc\u00e8ne remains crucial to maintaining the grandiosity of the Marci experience\u2014his reference pool and peerless lifestyle raps simultaneously enhance each other. When he drops an \u201cAin\u2019t no Tracee Ellis Rosses up at Ross\u201d in between luxury colognes and cars on \u201cVanity,\u201d the zinger juxtaposes the Girlfriends star with a hapless chad attempting to \u201ctrauma bond, crying inside the Prada store.\u201d The point: Shop wherever you want\u2014it may be on you, but it\u2019s in him. What the late Ka<\/a> did to build resolve against the unforgiving brutalities<\/a> of Brownsville, Marci combines with the flair of a Bond villain and contempt for anyone attempting to copy his mold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a world where plenty of rap elders are content to roll out unchallenging albums to steadfast fanbases,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[12327,64,63,134,136,1672],"class_list":{"0":"post-442903","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-albums","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-web"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}