Five years since his last official release, “Street Hop” by Eminem’s former best buddy Royce Da 5’9″ is a solid effort, but fails to meet expectations after such a long layoff.
Royce shouldn’t be blamed too much, since he set the bar high with his sophomore album “Death is Certain.” All he has been guilty of is failing to match that success in his latest work.
“Street Hop” has its bright spots, but it’s riddled with too many tracks where he tries hard to keep up with current trends, instead of showing off his own abilities.
The track that is the biggest offender is “Far Away” where he adds himself to the long list of rappers whose experiments with auto-tune have backfired.
The other move that failed Royce was his decision to include the tracks “Shake This” and “Part of Me,” since they’ve have been floating around the Internet for over a year.
