“Belt 2 Ass,” the fourth song on Rome Streetz’s glitzy and paranoid new project Sock It 2 My Pocket, starts off as a victory lap before running over some gravel. For Rome—a stalwart of the neo-classical hip-hop underground who rapped his way to becoming a pinch hitter for Griselda Records—celebrating his good fortune with Ken Griffey Jr. comparisons and an air of superiority befitting a Lox affiliate over a swanky Conductor Williams groove makes sense. But the rug pull comes barely 30 seconds in; the music expands into a rickety trumpet-backed breakbeat, and Rome shifts into telling a cautionary tale. The story of “Malik with the scar on his cheek,” an overconfident pusher who makes his spot hot and gets run up on for his chain by rivals, is chilling, if a bit boilerplate. The protagonist winding up a paraplegic from a swelled ego is sad enough, but Rome closes the distance at the story’s end with a bold admission: “Fucked up ’cause I know the nigga who did it/He sent me a couple beats; we did a song I never finished/Died in a car crash with his sister on Thanksgiving.” It’s like Rome is staring into the camera like Ace at the end of Paid In Full, reminding us just how quickly the lights can go out on this kind of party—but also making clear his complicity in the world he left behind.
All Rome Streetz projects exist at the uncomfortable intersection between fame and the seedy shit people sometimes do to get there. But there’s a difference between narrating crime scenes at a remove and wrestling with the lingering morality of it all. While there’s still plenty of action-packed deals and gaudy flexes to go around, Sock It 2 My Pocket stands out for the way guilt and survivor’s remorse fester in the margins more than usual. It’s doubly notable because this album—put out by Mass Appeal and sporting features from Lloyd Banks and Styles P and production from Havoc of Mobb Deep, Pete Rock, 9th Wonder, and Alchemist—is arguably the highest-profile work of Rome’s career so far. Having your biggest look also be your most penitent is a bold move, but it’s girded by Rome having put in years of work and collected plenty of horror stories to reflect on.
You can’t accuse the man behind songs like “Bible or the Rifle” or “Prayers Over Packages” of lacking self-awareness, but those tracks were largely framed around personal success and safety. Here, he widens the scope beyond the first-person. On “.22,” Rome’s claims his career as an MC is ordained while he sells his uncle “Gary a gram of Ike.” Most wins are chased by potent shots of dread, like the drug addicts crowded in recording studios on “Dreamcatcher” or thoughts of a “killer, same skin color as mine” briefly souring trips to Japan on “’95 Mega on Shrooms.” The stakes of these drug runs and quietly orchestrated hits, far in the rearview mirror as they may be, cling to Rome’s back a bit harder, the tension causing serious whiplash when he jumps back to rapping about exotic dinners or making the Devil pray to God.
He delivers it all with the same technically polished panache for which he’s known. It can be easy to take his stacked syllables and intricate rhymes for granted once the bars start flying, but there are flow state performances here that match his best on projects like Kiss the Ring or Death and the Magician. On the back half of opener “Yellow Brick Road” and the entirety of “Dreamcatcher,” he finds a pocket just behind the beats—by Graymatter and Ssllahi, respectively—and skips through the simmering minefields of choral samples and drums tamped like gunpowder. Extraordinary turns of phrase like “Got a whole closet full of skeletons ’cause I bone collect” pull you deeper into the illusion, but visions of women smuggling drugs in their crotches startle whip the POV back to the guilt powering Rome’s stories. He never offers a full-blown Cormega-on-“Fallen Soldiers” moment of honest reckoning, but still makes it clear that the European tours and lines of groupies are becoming less and less effective at blocking out the pain.
Victory and celebration are still in order, and Pocket delivers both in style. 9th Wonder’s beat on standout “High Speed” glistens on the surface of drums constantly zig-zagging around each other like a sliding puzzle, which match the penthouse reminisces about dirty trap basements in the lyrics. On closer “Elevate,” St. Louis producer Sovren’s bluesy sampled riffs and coos bolster what’s otherwise a by-the-numbers recap of life lessons fit for the millionth JAY-Z clone coming in off the street. Aside from Rome stumbling through the phrase “Body so tea” on “Time & Place,” the most severe trip-up here is on the love song “I Don’t Know.” While it largely avoids the For The Ladies virtue signaling of thug love ballads past, its sung hook, which is clearly meant to be an endearingly tongue-in-cheek moment, is a touch too silly for a rapper this otherwise serious.
Maybe he can’t pull off goofy karaoke, but Rome Streetz is still plenty captivating as a rapper. Though his sensibilities firmly root him in the boom-bap purist camp, any listener with a keen ear can glean the similarities between Rome and reformed trappers from other sides of the country like Alabama’s Rylo Rodriguez or D.C.’s ST6 JodyBoof. All of them make what is essentially pain rap articulated and pushed through regional filters, and Rome busts out enough flows, tempo changes, and references to younger icons to show he sees the strings as well as anyone. Sock It 2 My Pocket makes a case for East Coast boom-bap’s adaptability in an ever-changing landscape, even if Rome himself will never truly outrun his demons.
