Royce 5'9" "Street Hop" Album Review

Let me start off by saying that Royce Da 5'9" has been one of my favorite rappers since I heard him back on "Bad Meets Evil" and caught him live that year at the Lyricist Lounge in Club Avalon in Boston. This dude is one of the most precise dart spitters to grace a mic booth. His flow and delivery are so clean it's almost like he writes his bars on graph paper and makes sure every line takes up the same amount of boxes. When it comes to braggadocio/battle-rapping, there aren't too many emcees out there who can go toe-to-toe with him (although he needs to stop bragging about being P. Diddy's ghost writer 'cause Diddy's verses are all awful). His punch line game is among the best in hip-hop and he's consistently gotten better lyrically in my opinion.

All that being said, this album is a disappointment to me. Now, don't take that statement the wrong way - this album doesn't suck by any means (it's a good album). What's disappointing to me is that Royce announced this album back in 2006 and has been recording it for three years and he has leaked almost half the album out during the past few years. To me, this album is not really a new release. Of the new tracks that weren't leaked, Royce clearly and shamefully goes "commercial" on five of them. Another let down for me is that this album was initially going to be produced completely by DJ Premier and the final product only has three tracks from Premo (one of which is "Shake This" which is amazing, but was released like two years ago). All three of the Premo tracks are ill, as you would all expect.

"Street Hop" contains 19 tracks, 18 of which are songs, 13 of which I like a lot, but 7 of which I heard a while ago. The fact that a lot of the tracks are old kind of ruin this album for me. If this wasn't the case, I would be saying that this is an excellent album (minus the five extremely gay radio tracks that are on it). The lyrics are definitely on point throughout the entire album and Royce really shows his ability to make an album as opposed to just another Bar Exam Mixtape here. Tracks like "Gun Harmonizing", "Shake This", "Part of Me", "Murder" and "On The Run" prove that Royce is more than just a good battle rapper. I also strongly believe that the Slaughterhouse song "The Warriors" is by far the best Slaughterhouse song made so far. I wish their album sounded more like this song, unfortunately Royce leaked this track in July before Slaughterhouse's album dropped (so again, it's old to me).

The bottom line here is that I'm disappointed about not hearing as much new music as I wanted to on this album, but aside from this problem, "Street Hop" is probably Royce's best solo record and is quite impressive lyrically.
At the end of the day, I give this album  3.5 out of  5 because, had I not heard so many songs prior to its release, this album would have really impressed me. Unfortunately, most of the newer tracks are commercial as fuck and this really lowers the album's replay value for me.

Download the album here:

http://hotfile.com/dl/14733369/da3e316/RD59SH.rar.html

Street Hop drops on Tuesday, October 20 so make sure you support good hip-hop and buy this album! 

Peep the video of Royce talking about the album below: