After years spent languishing in industry purgatory, it was only natural that Knowledge the Pirate would hitch his wagon to Roc Marciano’s train. Both sullen New York street rhymers, they’d each been chewed up and spit out by labels who couldn’t market them in the age of Napster and boy bands. But Marciano’s 2010 debut Marcberg gave the lie to their boardroom logic. An insular, self-produced triumph circulated almost entirely through torrents and word-of-mouth, the album presaged a decade’s worth of self-referential East Coast hip-hop, and without any marketing. There was built-in demand for Marciano’s brand of stripped-down neoclassicism—even if it took a miracle like Marcberg to prove it—and Knowledge was along for the ride, appearing on Marcberg’s follow-ups and releasing his Marci-produced full-length, Flintlock, in 2018. In a crowded field, Knowledge continues to leverage the same well-worn blueprint on his latest album.
Hidden Treasure is a great-sounding record, even if that doesn’t always translate to memorable songs. Knowledge’s go-to producer E.L.E.M.N.T. has a knack for squeezing evocative phrasing from concise loops, alternating between muscular horn samples and understated piano instrumentals. As is the case across Marciano’s oeuvre, the percussion is spare, hooks lean and infrequent, and the tempo barely vacillates from 70bpm. E.L.E.M.N.T.’s best arrangements—the shimmering “Bloody Steps,” the contemplative “Righteous Tongue”—augment Knowledge’s noirscapes without being overly prescriptive. “Smoke & Mirrors,” with its chunky snare and choral sample, is the finest of the bunch. While E.L.E.M.N.T. can’t claim the Alchemist and Harry Fraud’s cinematic arcs, his steely loops place him solidly in the second tier of neoclassical producers alongside Giallo Point, Camoflauge Monk, Daringer, Big Ghost Ltd, and Nicholas Craven.
What’s fun about these producers’ roomy arrangements is that pockets abound for rappers who seek them, but Knowledge is akin to MC Eiht and Planet Asia in that he doesn’t flow so much as declaim. Like Marciano, he’s a dour vocalist and methodical scene-setter, slowly embellishing verbal snapshots with context and acuity. But where Marci’s verses burgeon with callbacks and tricky asides, Knowledge’s are mainly static, punctuated by free-standing couplets that impede narrative progress. “He used to be up, now be broke lookin’ lame/And them new gangstas rockin’ skinny jeans and choker chains,” he rhymes on “Righteous Tongue”; in another verse, he name-drops “Freeway” Ricky Ross. The settings—bricks here, narcos there, jewels and femmes fatale everywhere—are by now familiar, and the way he stacks images on top of one another makes them feel like bullet-pointed lists. It’s technically sound—there just aren’t many quotables to write home about.
The post-Marcberg aesthetic increasingly relies on contrasts: vivid stylists rapping over minimalist beats, resplendent narratives relayed by wheezing drug dealers. And when Knowledge and E.L.E.M.N.T. switch up the pace, it really clicks. The sax loop on “Chairman of the Board” rings out like a clarion call, richly foregrounding Knowledge’s lifestyle bars. Fellow Marci protégé Stove God Cooks provides comic relief on “Grenades,” playing the wild-eyed triggerman opposite Knowledge’s wizened street survivor: “Big homie said don’t even speak on it, just lie back/He Rodman with the Pistons, he just ain’t dyed yet.” A flamboyant caricature of a Giuliani-era trafficker, Stove God is a brilliant foil for Knowledge’s deliberate raconteur—they should be a duo.
As a contributor to Reloaded and Marci Beaucoup, Knowledge helped lay the foundation for a sound that’s since become a dominant force in hip-hop. The bar’s been set extremely high, and in light of Mach-Hommy’s immersive world-building, Rome Streetz’s vocal acrobatics, and Crimeapple’s oddball humor, Hidden Treasure plays like a back-to-basics revue: no Goodfellas punchlines or gimmicky ad-libs, just solid rhymes over-expressive loops. With Marciano still at the top of his game, Knowledge’s output can feel apocryphal in a way that the personality-driven work of their more animated peers doesn’t, but there’s truth to the adage that a rising tide lifts all boats.
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