The Revival EP by Royce Da 5'9": A Review

Royce Da 5'9" and the rest of Slaughterhouse (Joe Budden, Crooked I, and Joel Ortiz) are each releasing individual EPs in July to promote the upcoming Slaughterhouse debut album. A proper EP is supposed to give you a taste of the upcoming album. You should have a sense of the range of the artist as well as his vision. It should whet your appetite for the album as well, and Royce's The Revival EP scores on all counts.

Consisting of just four tracks, Royce repeatedly proves why he commands such respect as an underground rapper. His punchlines are as sharp as they have ever been, perhaps even sharper now that he has teamed up with some of the sharpest underground emcees in the game to form Slaughterhouse. Perhaps the best solo track is the leadoff Gun Harmonizing wherein he proves his mic mastery with a range of gun-related metaphors; also noteworthy is his use of vocal sound effects on this track. Count for Nothing is similar braggadocio, and is followed by the Slaughterhouse track Warriors. Warriors perhaps outclasses Onslaught as Slaughterhouse's best pure battle rap track. For one, each rapper has two verses, and each sounds like they are out to prove, once and for all, that they are undoubtedly the best rapper in the crew.

Royce's vocals sounds too much like Crooked I on his first verse so it's hard to tell when his first verse begins, but beyond this minor criticism aside, the track is excellent. It's also much harder to call who has the best verse on this track rather than most of their previous offerings. The shrill and ambitious instrumental recalls some earlier Wu productions; and if Joe Budden's recent confrontation with Method Man leads to a full-fledged lyrical battle between Slaughterhouse and Wu-Tang Clan, then the Clansmen had better be ready: Slaughterhouse is on it's A-game.

The EP is closed out with Street Hip-Hop 2010, featuring some of the illest metaphors this side of Eminem's recent single Chemical Warfare. The one possible grievance is that if this is indeed an accurate preview of the upcoming album, then punchlines are all that will be on the forthcoming album. That is not necessarily a bad thing; after all, there was little personal about Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). But because Royce has spent so much time on the mixtapes, one would hope there might be a concept record or a personal record here. Perhaps he does not want to waste his best material on the EP, and even if not, if the Slaughterhouse record consists of tracks of this caliber, then there will be few, if any complaints.

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