“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.
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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.
