Album Layers
Artist Royce 5’9”
Royce 5’9” don’t fall off. His consistency can be traced far back: through his recent mixtape Trust the Shooter to the excellent self-titled project PRhyme with DJ Premier, to his days as half of Bad Meets Evil with Eminem, to his time as part of the group Slaughterhouse, and further still. Despite the creep of time that so often tarnishes the legacies of hip hop legends, Royce always delivers: his technical ability — flow, breath control — lyrics and rhyming schemes remain impressive even today.
Consistency is double-edged, however. Royce still crushes beats on Layers, but without those Premo instrumentals there isn’t enough energy left in them to push back. A wealth of producers contribute to this project, but somehow their beats all blend together in a haze of looped drum kits and choir vocals. Royce is left without much ground to stand on — not that he can’t keep up regardless.
Songs like ‘Tabernacle’ prove what Royce can do with words alone; he doesn’t need to reach into fantasy to tell a compelling story like so many of his peers. The tale of his grandmother’s death and the birth of his first child, which both occurred in the same hospital at the same time, on the fifth and ninth floors respectively, is heavy and hits hard. Ideas of fate and God swim through his mind, and he claims the title 5’9” in recognition of how “everything moves in cycles.”
Further along, however, tracks such as ‘Startercoat’ and ‘Misses’ show the limitations of Royce’s style. Dated lyrics and weak hooks make these songs feel like 90s relics that should have been left on the cutting-room floor. Either an inability or an unwillingness to update some elements of his style hold an otherwise great album back. Songs like ‘Tabernacle’, ‘Pray’, ‘Hard’, the title track and more all deserve praise, but at over an hour long, some might find Layers more trouble than it’s worth.
In a nutshell: Consistency pays off with another good project, but it falls shy of greatness due to poor beat choices and some stylistic elements which haven’t aged well.
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