I have a buddy from NYC who turns me on to most of my hip hop these days mainly because I have given up on it. When SXSW rolls around I get into again and find a few clowns that are ok but for the most part, only a few of them have staying power. We typically agree on what’s hot and what’s pretty wack, so when he threw Rockie Fresh my way a few months ago, I was excited. Especially after I heard a few cuts but I try not to rush to judgement on new artists. When you have a name like Fresh, you have quite a bit to live up to. You have Mannie Fresh, Doug E. Fresh. Fresh Prince of…ok that took it a little too far but you get what I’m saying. You can’t call yourself Fresh and be lame, you have to come correct . So I gave it a few months to see how it would sit with me.
I miss the days when you could put on an entire album like Enter the 36 Chambers , Q Tip’s The Renaissance, or Me Against the World. Now I’ll admit my standards are pretty high and I realize that not everything has to be game defining but with those albums, it just seemed like some much was put into each and every song. With hip hop today, you focus on two maybe three songs and come up with 10 filler songs about weed and you have an album.
While Rockie doesn’t fit into this category just yet, it feels like he’s headed there with his latest album Electric Highway. Once you start getting some pub it seems like the prerequisite to get ahead is to get overproduced tracks and have Rick Ross on at least one of them. I blame Puff Daddy for this, but the good thing is Rockie isn’t wearing a record label chain around his neck or has some random dude in the background whose sole job is the dance off beat. He still brings it with You A Lie (remix with Rick Ross of course) but for the most part you kind of get bored with this album. The songs on it are ok if they pop up on someone’s Spotify playlist at a party but I would suggest checking out his mixtapes The Otherside and Driving 88.
By far the best song of his is So Gone which is on The Otherside, It starts off chopped and screwed and then mixes in some autotune in the hook. But it’s not overused and he drops some pretty dope rhymes on this track as well. As Far As You Let Me is nice quick track about trying to get out of the friend zone with a girl, and The Worth is a slamming track about chasing your dreams; something that hits home with me as I slave away at the corporate compound that I work in. I swear David Koresh is coming by any second to organize the mass suicide.
Do yourself a favor and check out this dude’s stuff before his hanging out with scrubs like Good Charlotte starts to take some of his freshness away. Once Lil Mouse finds out about this, I’m sure Rockie’s a dead man anyway. Check out that scary story here
I rate Rockie as FRESH!
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