Wednesday 11/25: Roc Marciano—"Downtown 81"
Today, we share our thoughts on a new song by the New York rapper Roc Marciano.
Welcome to Endless Scroll, the brainchild of Eli Enis (he/him) and Eric Bennett (they/them). Since Feb. 2019, we’ve been a weekly podcast about music, the internet, and where those two things intersect. Now we’re, also a M-F newsletter about songs. Our format is simple: a link to a song and a short take from each of us about what we think of it. Each day of the week has a corresponding genre: Monday is indie, Tuesday is punk, Wednesday is hip-hop, Thursday is pop, and Friday is misc.
Today, we share our thoughts on a new song by the Long Island rapper Roc Marciano.
Roc Marciano—"Downtown 81"
Michael Brooks:
If you thought that you could go to Spotify or Apple Music or whatever streaming service you use (Tidal gang where you at?) to check out Roc Marciano’s new album, you would be wrong. It's not there. If you did want to check it out, it costs $40 to buy a digital download of Roc Marciano’s latest album Mt. Marci from his website. This is far from the first time a rapper has done something like this—in 2013 Nipsey Hussle sold 1,000 copies of his Crenshaw mixtape on CD for $100 (it sold out in less than 24 hours and Jay Z even picked up 100 copies for himself); earlier this year R.A.P. Ferreira charged $77 for their latest album on vinyl (but to be fair it is a double LP); and even Marciano himself has charged exuberant prices for MP3s on his webstore since the release of his 2017 project Rosebudd’s Revenge. I only mention this because. personally, I think that it’s fucking awesome. I mean, it’s hard enough for an artist to make money in 2020 with streaming services offering laughable royalty rates and the lack of touring, so shoutouts to the Roc Marciano’s of the world that have found a way to make some real money off their art.
And even though Mt. Marci isn’t available on streaming services, it’s 2020 for Christ’s sake. In the time it takes you to read this blurb you could easily find the album on YouTube or Reddit, and I highly recommend that you do because it’s really good. But if that’s too much work for you then you can just check out the video for album highlight “Downtown 81,” where Marciano delivers the razor-sharp lyricism we’ve come to expect from the Long Island MC over a gloomy beat courtesy of producer Jake One. In his raps, Maricano is a larger than life personality, and on “Downtown 81” the beat just kind of swerves around him, stretching his dazed flow to its limits. But my favorite thing about Marciano is how funny he is without even trying. It’s hard to imagine anybody else rhyming “Scott Baio” with “mayo” and making it sound as fucking cool as he does.
Eli Enis:
I feel like it’s fair to say that the rap game has caught up with Roc Marciano. With the rise of Griselda, Freddie Gibbs, Boldy James, Stove God Cooks, and anyone else who taps The Alchemist for production, there’s definitely a brighter spotlight being shown on classy yet rough-around-the-edges street-raps than there was even two years back. A lot of those guys have been at it as long as Roc has, but he came into his own in the early 2010s (back when Freddie was recovering from a brush with major league failure, and a couple years before Boldy would endure similar issues) while his peers were still refining their sound.
A song like “Downtown 81” sounds completely in-line with any of the previous names I mentioned, but there’s a relaxed elegance to Roc’s delivery that insinuates he’s been doing this for a while. Plus, he’s got bars. “Drive-by spray your Loreto with five dracos / The behind on the Wraith though it look like one of Drake hoes,” he raps towards the end of the verse that’s mostly just one rhyme scheme. I love his kind of squeaky voice and the way it interacts with the beat, which sounds like hotel lobby music from 1981—definitely the vibe he was going for. Even in a rap climate where you have many options for this type of thing, Roc Marciano isn’t letting himself be outshone.