Last May, a simmering generational conflict between Lil Yachty and Joe Budden came to a head on Complex’s Everyday Struggle. Budden’s dual claims to fame are the 2003 hit “Pump It Up” and his status as the most Old Man Yells At Cloud person in hip-hop. So he was playing to type when, within minutes of the show’s opening, he began berating Yachty for everything from the younger rapper’s album art to his claim that he was happy 24/7. The beating heart of the confrontation comes 11 minutes in, when Budden demands that Yachty rank his contemporaries, and Yachty refuses to because “that’s kind of weird.”
Royce 5’9”, Budden’s sometime bandmate in the rap group Slaughterhouse, says that the encounter gave him nightmares. On PRhyme 2, the second album he’s made with DJ Premier under their (poorly chosen) joint name, he raps that Yachty, 19 at the time of the interview, is about the same age as his son. He recalls the rapper Canibus reacting poorly to Eminem’s rise, points out that time goes in circles, and concludes his verse by saying that he’s not here for villainizing the youth. In case anyone missed the point, the song is called “Everyday Struggle.”
If only the rest of PRhyme 2 were so generous. The contrast between Budden and Yachty provides a helpful way of understanding Royce’s struggles throughout the record: Sometimes, the veteran Detroit rapper transcends his natural Buddenism, avoiding corny punchlines, esoteric lyrical easter eggs, and bars that lead him nowhere. At other times, he doesn’t.
In this LP’s best moments, like the opener “Black History,” Premo laces him with a rich tapestry through which Royce weaves compelling narrative threads. His long experience in the industry allows for an incredible depth of texture, replete with echoes of JAY-Z, Snoop, Tribe, and Camp Lo. “Loved Ones” is a fantastic duet between Royce and the North Carolina rapper Rapsody, in the tradition of Biggie and Lil’ Kim on “Another” or Jay-Z and Memphis Bleek on “Coming of Age.”
But much of the time, Royce spins his wheels, hurls retrograde insults at foes, or performs lyrical tricks for a small audience. His already not-great verse on “Era” is interrupted by a semi-functional triple pun that involves XXXTentacion. It’s the second triple pun in two songs and, throughout the record, Royce comes across as the kind of rapper who thinks that this alone should earn him five mics from The Source. This is a 40-year-old who’s shameless enough to drop the line “I am the absolute shit/I actually speak latrine” (on the otherwise good “Sunflower Seeds”), which belongs in a category that Lil Wayne exhausted a decade ago.
Guests like Dave East and Roc Marciano mostly avoid these challenges by opting for straightforward revivalism, a significantly safer mode. They fare moderately well. 2 Chainz, though, has a standout verse on the late-album cut “Flirt,” in which he expertly combines the new and the old, with his trademark jokes and a vintage Eminem flow. (“Flirt,” by the way, is preceded by the funniest skit I’ve heard in years.)
If Royce often has to fight his instincts, DJ Premier should have trusted his more. Both of PRhyme’s records have operated under an unusual constraint, with Premier using another producer’s beats as source material for his own. On their 2014 album, it was Adrian Younge; this time, it’s the underrated Philadelphia producer Antman Wonder, who, like Younge, mostly eschews samples in favor of original compositions. Premier mines some gems from Wonder’s cache, including the beats for on “Respect My Gun,” “Sunflower Seeds,” “My Calling,” “Made Man,” and “Do Ya Thing.” Elsewhere he makes strange decisions, like the little squeaks that ruin “Era,” or the occasional doubling of the beat that drags down “Everyday Struggle”. And someone needs to be held responsible for the Flock of Seagulls interpolation on “Streets at Night,” which isn’t even an original way to tweak that song. (The Slim Thug version wasn’t good either.)
One of the most fundamental challenges facing elder statesmen like DJ Premier and Royce is how to balance their values with those of the younger fans they hope to win. Royce sometimes seems as though he’s aware of that tension. On “Streets at Night,” after he says that he comes from “where you don’t disrespect none of your successors,” there’s an interesting line. “‘Who the best?’ is a horrible, rhetorical, sick question,” he raps, perhaps suggesting that the practice of pitting artists against each other in an arbitrary hierarchy is better left in the ’90s. Or, alternately, maybe he’s just saying that he is so clearly the best that it’s not even a question worth asking. (Which, lol.) Either way, he makes it clear where his loyalties ultimately lie on “Black History,” where he can’t help telling us about his own ranking of the best rappers alive. His list? Kendrick Lamar, Pusha T, Eminem, himself, and the other three guys in Slaughterhouse—including, of course, Joe Budden.
