Photo Source: eOne Music Company
Detroit lyricist, Royce da 5’9 has had a steady and prominent career in hip-hop over the last twenty years. From the years 2008-2018, he was one-fourth of the rap supergroup Slaughterhouse, and has been consistently churning in amazing lyrical verses as part of the duos Bad Meets Evil and PRhyme. However, while his witty and clever “bar-fest” projects as part of these groups are no doubt amazing (I mean who else is putting together punchlines such as: “put your whole family in boxes like y’all the Brady Bunch”) it has been Royce’s past few solo albums where he has really shown to grow as an artist.
His albums Layers (2016) and Book of Ryan (2018) have offered a more introspective side to the MC’s life and journey; reflecting on his childhood, mistakes he made in life, and the systems in our culture that have placed him in the life he lives at this moment. These albums sounded like albums he needed to put out for himself in a therapeutic sort of sense. Now, with The Allegory (2020) Royce has created something for audiences that he feels they need to hear.
Released on February 21st, just in time for black history month, The Allegory is an album that examines African-American culture (past and present) and urges the community to never accept anything just at face value. The concept and theme of this album derive from “The Allegory of the Cave” by the Greek philosopher Plato. The theory depicts prisoners who are forced to watch shadows on a wall created by a flame behind them. People behind the prisoners create puppets with the shadows, causing the prisoners to view the shadows as their reality, not looking behind them to see the light from the flame or the light from outside.
Royce applies this concept to the entirety of the album, calling for people to question their government and not just accept what the people pulling the strings tells us to. It is an insanely creative idea for an album. Music is one of the most tried and truest ways to reach out to the masses, and Royce wants to implore people to consider other perspectives besides your own.
On the track “Tricked” featuring ex-Slaughterhouse member KXNG Crooked, the two rappers argue that the black community has been led to believe a list of fallacies since birth. Lines such as “forever havin’ issues with my brother, that’s a trick/because we Crips and Bloods we kill each other, that’s a trick” illustrate a sort of pent up frustration that Royce shares with his community; a sentiment carried over to the track “Rhinestone Doo Rag” where Royce pushes for the next generation of children to practice independence and being their own boss.
There is plenty to unpack in this album, each track can facilitate a discourse that would be most beneficial for the black youth, but everyone should participate in it. I will say, while I appreciate the theme of perspective pushed throughout these twenty-two tracks, there were some portions that I still need clarification on. Specifically, two tracks where Royce’s lyrics seem to push an anti-vaccination stance, one lyric stating: “my son got autism from injection by syringes.” Maybe it’s not so much that Royce is anti-vax, but that he proposes to question a government that has historically experimented on the black community (the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, the Medical College of Virginia in the 1950s, and experiments on black and poor cancer patients by the department of defense in the 60s–just to name a few). But I’m not sure, I will need to hear Royce’s interpretation of his lines.
Regardless, this is without a doubt one of the best albums that came out this year so far. Especially for hip-hop fans, even if analyzing deep messaging isn’t your thing, Royce still shows off his lyrical prowess over great instrumentals–all of which were produced by him. The rhyme schemes, deliveries and flows Royce employs on this album is unmatched, and with the discussions, he starts on this album, I think it is something that will stand the test of time in the hip-hop culture.
