If Rosco P. Coldchain was rap’s Moonlight Graham—a perennial, on-the-cusp prospect, his breakthrough deferred by a 14-year prison stint—his cult status is, in its way, untarnished. The Philadelphia native is more could’ve-been than never-was, firmly canonized for his supporting roles on Lord Willin’ and Clones. A precise, kinetic technician, he found a home amid the Neptunes’ turn-of-the-century production, weaving around their syncopated drums and space-age synths. His shelved debut, Hazardous Life, a casualty of the 2004 Arista merger, promised to wed Clipse’s acrobatics with northeastern pugilism.
What music actually saw light is another story. After parting ways with Pharrell and Chad Hugo, Coldchain hit the studio with North Carolina producer Fatin Horton, an understudy of 9th Wonder. The output of those sessions—collected on 2012’s aptly titled Almost Famous, released some half-decade into Coldchain’s sentence—is irresolute post-backpack rap, a rejection of the Neptunes’ million-dollar sheen. Coldchain is animated as ever, but the swing is gone, the fireworks dimmed. In either case, the squeaky-clean music acted as a counterweight, isolating Coldchain’s vocal depths and rhythmic idiosyncrasies. If it never cohered stylistically, it made sense logistically.
Coldchain returned to the booth upon his release in early 2023; For the Mature follows on the heels of 2024’s Living on Borrowed Time. The new album, produced by Philadelphia neighbor Keem Kong, positions Coldchain as an honorable elder statesman with a Swiss Army knife skillset. Opener “Caught Up” plays like an off-the-cuff manifesto, rhymes nested in knotty clusters and delivered with conversational breeziness. Coldchain’s couplets assume downhill momentum on “High Horse,” the slanted single-time flow giving way to an emphatic double-time cadence. Guest rapper Ant White is left holding the bag on the song’s second verse, spinning his wheels in search of verbiage and mechanics to match.
You want to focus on Coldchain’s bars and syllabic patterns, but For the Mature is devoted to concept records of middling distinction: an award ceremony, a lockup diary, a Kim-and-Kanye parable. The prison monologue “Visits” is an exacting play-by-play, from fingerprinting at intake to delirious prescription-drug withdrawals. But Coldchain is hemmed in—literally—by the setup, able to take the device in only so many directions. The album’s midtempo production otherwise guarantees room for Coldchain’s maneuvers, Kong favoring chilly rimshots and single-tracked keyboards. Had he followed that thread, he might’ve arrived at a blues-club intimacy; as is, the ambiance is hedged and clinical.
To his credit, Coldchain’s never been bound to a single sound, or attempted to replicate past glories. What he’s lacked, through shifting phases, is a stable of producers and collaborators to reflect—rather than contrast—his ornate grit. He and Kong might have taken cues from Dark Lo, a Philadelphia rapper of similar sensibility, whose incarceration interrupted a string of riveting, bellowing street operas. Instead, Coldchain spends For the Mature in a state of adaptation, prowling the outskirts for a new niche or a lost path.
