"Don't be out showing your teeth/ Niggas will think shit is sweet, so keep it low and discreet." Long Island's Roc Marciano follows his own advice. Once destined to be an also-ran of Busta Rhymes' Flipmode Squad, Marciano has locked himself in a dilapidated apartment and recorded a masterwork of insular, borderline-sociopathic hip-hop, much in the vein of the mid-1990s heyday of Mobb Deep. Prodigy once threatened to stab you with the bone of your own nose, and Marciano also comes from the streets of pre-Giuliani New York, where it's so dark you can barely see three feet ahead of you, where "niggas [are] duct-taped up and mistaken for lunch." In Marciano's New York, the weak get devoured and smacking someone is explicitly referred to as an involuntary movement.
Marcberg could be heard as revivalism in the vein of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...Pt. II from kindred spirit Raekwon, mainly because it sounds like it was released in 1992. Marciano still refers to police officers as "jakes," Naughty by Nature and Earl Boykins(!), as well as London Fog(!!) are all referenced. The beats are minor-key, sample-based boom-bap, as if Swizz Beats, shiny suits, and rappers in skinny jeans never happened. The key to the record's appeal is that while it clearly pays homage to a bygone hip-hop era, it never sounds dated or overtly reverent.
Much of that is due to Marciano's hyper-syllabic and percussive flow, narrative flair, and fastidious eye for detail as both a rapper and producer. Along with the eerily visceral thump of "Pop", he keeps his eye on the kids on roller skates, hoping none of them get hit with a stray bullet during an impending gunfight. The blaxploitation groove on "Whateva Whateva" serves as the perfect backdrop for Marciano's gifted wordplay and dark comedy, where Marciano threatens to "pop the air out of your balloon and the spare, too." None of the music on Marcberg rises above a dull roar, but that makes it that much scarier; here, you have no idea when someone is going to jump out of the corner and shoot you.
Even when Marciano tips toward cliché, he finds a way to make it work. The whole drug-as-woman metaphor has been around forever, which makes "Jungle Fever" all the more impressive. A tender ballad centered around a bright-but-dusty piano sample, Marciano attacks the subject of dealing cocaine by envisioning it as an interracial relationship. But what makes "Jungle Fever" special is that while other rappers might adopt the obvious "Hey, white girl, let's have fun" pose of the song's premise, Marciano lets his guard down after he and the girl in question start making money together, letting her buy him clothes and hiding her from his mother. By the end, he's waiting by the phone for her to call, stressing over when she's going to return, or if she's even going to return at all.
"Fuck being a taxpayer," Marciano snorts. If Marcberg sounds so claustrophobic and unconcerned about the rap scene surrounding it (one that has changed over at least four or five times since this record's closest counterparts have been recorded), it could be because Marciano has been too busy honing his craft to worry about swag rap.
