I didn’t find Royce interesting when he first appeared with Eminem on the ‘Bad Meets Evil’ single, nor when was given some choice DJ Premier and Alchemist tracks for his ill-fated Rock City album, and definitely not for his part in the consistently underwhelming Slaughterhouse. His cadence, style, voice, and content all fail to capture my attention, no matter how great his production might be. I forced myself to listen to PRYME a number of times in the hope that maybe I was missing the secret ingredient that his fans seem to embrace, but no dice.

This guy can rap for hours, has an impressive vocabulary, and seems to hate everybody — a trio of worthy attributes on paper. Why, then, is listening to him such a chore? Could it be that annoying, raspy voice? His constant references to aliens and tin-foil hat conspiracy theories? The fact that he bragged about how ‘no one can eat a nigga’s ass like me’ when he went toe to toe with LL Cool J? Let’s just settle for the fact that he has horrible taste in beats, the charisma of a Star Trek fan who still lives in his mother’s basement, and is only considered to be a great rapper by people who used to be involved in ‘keystyle’ rap battles in AOL chatrooms. Pass the notebook.

I interviewed this dude after his enjoyable ‘Watch How It Go Down’ single dropped and he seemed like a nice enough fellow with a sensible head on his shoulders. He then proceeded to release an album with a dream-team line-up of legendary producers such as Buckwild, Havoc, Pete Rock, Large Professor, DJ Premier, and Easy Mo Bee and ruined it by Whisper Rapping the shit out of it. Since then he’s appeared on literally thousands of Statik Selektah compilations and ruined what could have been a brilliant Lil’ Fame album by rapping all over the Fizzyology tape.

Another intelligent, sensible young man who has consistently failed to engage me on any musical level, save for that old song where he rapped over a really good old Lewis Parker beat. So far, the highlight of his career was the time he allegedly broke a security guard’s nose in Byron Bay in 2015. If only he could transfer some of that aggression into his music instead of designing bucket hats for Stussy then maybe he’d make more of an impression on me.

A great example of the current state of rappers who get over on account of carefully orchestrated image, clever videos, and being affiliated with a genuine star. While I traditionally enjoy the depressing dirges that much of his music seems to occupy, the fact that he fails to actually rhyme 50% of the time and is overly reliant on vocal gimmickry and repetition makes for a particularly shallow experience.

This guy seems to have made quite an impression on folk with his mixture of ‘witty’ punchlines and R&B hooks back when mixtapes were a viable way to get by, which basically makes him a slightly less delusional Papoose — the difference being that Fab has actually got some hit songs under his belt. Unfortunately, as great as the ‘Breathe’ instrumental is, Fabolous’s monotone voice, one-dimensional brag raps, and his fondness for making ‘punk smoove shit’ means that he barely rates above Lloyd Banks in the ‘rapping mummy’ Olympics.

Once again, try as I might to embrace what this Detroit dude is bringing to the table, I’ve never been able to see him as anything more than a poor-man’s Sean Price, minus the twisted sense of humour and sharp wit. He’s perfectly serviceable as a lyricist but at the end of the day comes off as just another cog in the Mediocre Indy Rap machine. Hashtag blame Stones Throw.