s&d: roc-a-fella besides you-know-who

ok, so for a long long time, I wrote off the Roc as being carried by its one champ, and otherwise completely hopeless (remember Da Ranjahz? or Amil, who forever in my mind is, as astutely observed by someone on the old Roc-a-fella message board on AOL, circa 98, “Canibus in drag”), not much of a dynasty at all. i mean, at least No Limit in its prime could move units of its no-names, but the Roc never seemed to have the brand-name cache they really wanted to.

but in the past year, the rest of the roster has finally started to pull its weight and had a couple big hits not by or guesting Jay (“roc the mic” and “oh boy”). and his decision in the past couple years (since the superproducer overkill of Vol3) to stop relying so much on the Primos and Timbos, has ended up allowing some newer kids to for once carve out an identifiable “roc-a-fella sound”, mainly Just Blaze and Kanye West (whose beats i adore).

time will tell on Freeway but i’ve dug almost everything he’s done so far and “Line Em Up” is massive; Cam’ron is blah as ever and “Oh Boy” blowing up has nothing to do with him being on it; Bleek i think will never have a hit w/out Jay or someone big guesting on it even if he has mostly recovered from the initial (and in hindsight, laughable) expectations of him being the next Jay; and i’m still waiting for Ethan to explain the whole Beans thing to me.