Roc Marciano has managed to create a lane that only he (and a select few of his chosen cohorts) are capable of existing in. He’s your favorite underground rapper’s favorite underground rapper, and his fifteen-plus years of solo releases delve deeper and deeper into the world he’s built. On one hand, you know what you’re going to get with a Roc Marci album: gritty samples that range from soulful to unsettling, rhyme schemes that only a madman could come up with, and some of the most cartoonish humor this side of Westside Gunn. But he still finds ways to surprise and delight, as 656 makes clear.

For the uninitiated, Roc Marci is about as far away from a pop rapper as is humanly possible. He makes Conway the Machine sound like a Bad Boy artist circa 1997. His songs are short, sweet, and to the point, often eschewing hooks for long verses briefly broken up by humorous shit-talking. The real star of any Roc Marci album is the lyrical performance and the outlandishness within. Opener “Trick Bag” cuts right to the chase:

_{Skate out of Gucci like Kristi Yamaguchi
Flip you like a Samurai Suzuki
I been nice since Iceberg shirts with the Snoopy}

The album is filled with such passages: technically impressive with “what in the world” comedic wit. Even his darkly violent bars are too funny to take too seriously:

_{Keep the street sweeper to clean your clock
Piece of your mind got on my Filas
Fuck you was thinking? I just seen it fly}

While Marci dropping bars is no surprise, the scene-stealing performances from Errol Holden (particularly on “Trapeze”) might be:

_{On the project roof looking for a sign, wasn’t none
So I bought a 125 plus another one
Son was on the run so long he forgot what he was running from
When they caught him, they reminded him, gave him a hundred some years
No tears, just a grin
He took it on the chin
Never let them see you sweat, we took that as a win}

656 may not be for everyone, but it’s ear candy for Roc Marciano’s core audience. Anyone looking for a 30-minute exhibition of unadulterated rapping talent should just hit play and enjoy.