Jay Rock’s 2008 debut single “All My Life (In the Ghetto)” introduced him to the mainstream, three years after he signed on with Top Dawg Entertainment in 2005. Now, Rock’s second studio album “90059” comes a whole seven years after his formal introduction and four years after his debut effort, “Follow Me Home.” Four years of “business and politics” — as Rock said in an interview with XXL Magazine — did nothing to quell the hype for one of Top Dawg Entertainment’s longest-tenured lyricists.
Most of Jay Rock’s hype stems from the success of fellow labelmates like Isaiah Rashad and co-members of the hip-hop group Black Hippy — Ab-Soul, Kendrick Lamar and Schoolboy Q. Each has released an album to widespread critical acclaim in the last two years, with Rock yet to join the party.
Always known for his intense delivery and narrative-driven storytelling, Rock delivers with “90059.” It’s an album that’s light on hard-hitting tracks but heavy on sonic appeal. Each album has a story to tell, and Rock enlists a litany of collaborators, like his Black Hippy groupmates, Isaiah Rashad, Busta Rhymes and SZA, to help narrate.
The first song — “Necessary” — is a track with heavy trap influences. This song is the perfect opener to an album, featuring lines that are an obvious homage to Rock’s own childhood and career tribulations like, “The struggle is real / You gotta do what you got to just to get over the hill.” The album’s second song “Easy Bake” features more trap-influenced beats, a verse with Kendrick Lamar and Jay Rock going line-for-line and a radio interlude leading into a beat switch.
The energy of “90059” takes a nosedive after the first two tracks — save for highly redeemable tracks like “Vice City” and the album’s namesake “90059” — but more than makes up for it by simply sounding good. The rhythmic beat and hook of “Gumbo,” Isaiah Rashad’s grungy voice on the hook of “Wanna Ride,” the bridge on “The Ways” and the album’s fitting final track “The Message” all have great elements to them.
Jay Rock comes through on this album as passionate, wordy and technically proficient, but he struggles with lyrics. Song concepts like the ones featured on “Necessary” and “Vice City” are derivative of most rappers’ origin story. The highs on this album — the gripping beat and flow on “Necessary” and “Easy Bake,” and Schoolboy Q’s guest-verse on “Vice City” — don’t even involve Rock himself. Essentially, this album could have been managed by any number of mainstream rappers, and I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.
However, It’s hard to blame Rock for this. “90059” is only his second album in ten years and had to feel like a reintroduction to America for a rapper who should have been fairly embedded in the national consciousness by now. Much of the appeal of each Black Hippy members’ commercial projects is the personality each displays through their music. Kendrick Lamar is a gripping, arcane storyteller on “To Pimp a Butterfly,” while Schoolboy Q strikes the perfect balance between self-indulgent and socially conscious on “Oxymoron.”
Rock’s personality fails to shine through on this album despite its excellent sound. “90059” is a really good hip-hop album, but I don’t know how good of a Jay Rock album it is.
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