who released the excellent UN or U Out album in 2004.
This is music as cinema and a call back to the grimy underbelly of New York seen in the best films of the 1970s evoking everything from the early work of Scorsese and the blaxploitation era, to the snuff movies and slasher flicks of the grindhouse circuit.Īfter an uneventful start as a member of Busta Rhymes’ extended Flipmode Squad, Roc Marciano first appeared on most people’s radar as part of the group The U.N. He weaves screenplay-worthy characters into his lyrics, directing their actions with purpose and meaning, and scoring instrumentals that create a gritty sense of realism like a great cinematographer who spends days selecting the right film stock to shoot with. If the Notorious B.I.G., Mobb Deep, Raekwon and Jay-Z were inspired by larger-than-life movie criminals like Tony Montana and Frank White, Marciano is more like the filmmaker behind the camera. He’s the consummate artist, the rapper’s rapper, and without a doubt one of the most important artists to emerge so far this century.
He has earned the respect of everyone in the game, including rappers way more famous and successful than he is. Without the Marciano blueprint there would be no Westside Gunn or the rest of his Griselda crew, or countless other rappers bubbling on the indie rap scene right now who are making Marciano-esque hip-hop. Instead he dissected and deconstructed it, and rebuilt it into something akin to high-art, equal parts luxurious and devastatingly bleak. Roc Marciano didn’t invent cinematic street rap.
Happy 10th Anniversary to Roc Marciano’s debut album Marcberg, originally released May 4, 2010.
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