Royce Da 5’9” recently released his highly-anticipated latest solo album, The Allegory, last Friday, Feb. 21st and while he continues to make his rounds around radio to promote the album. That includes his ridiculous freestyle on the L.A. Leakers Liftoff show on Power 106 LA just yesterday. He also continues to get rave reviews for the album, as well as the great news that he enjoys both the #1 and #2 spots on iTunes Hip-Hop/Rap Albums chart debuting at #1 with the release of, The Allegory. Also enjoying the #2 spot for his work on his Bad Meets Evil partner Eminem’s Music to Be Murdered By.
If that wasn’t enough today, Royce in commemoration of the recent release of the album premiere through Complex his new Cricket-directed video for the KXNG CROOKED-assisted, Tricked. The eye-opening and politically driven new visual for the very lyrically informative collaboration with his Slaughterhouse brethren about the troubled label deals and discriminations most Hip-Hop artists go through. Showing different headlines in the news flashing all the things most Hip-Hop artists or even the fans are brainwashed into listening to and consuming.
Royce having the following to say in a statement to Complex about the video and single, “I think we’re all being tricked with the information that we’ve been taking in, and the powers that be are doing the tricking. For the majority of my verse, I’m speaking about being a black man coming up in a hostile environment, and doing as the Romans do. Like a lot of things, that’s been indoctrinated into us. I use Crips and Bloods as an example. It’s a taught behavior. And by the time we reach a point of elevated consciousness, oftentimes we’re in it to too far to get out of it. So it takes a special kind of person to be willing to unlearn a lot of the things that he or she has learned. But it’s to re-learn the right way to do things, and re-learn the truth about certain things.”
Make sure you pay close attention to what both he and Crook are saying on the track. It’s stuff so simple that a lot of us are too blind to see and pay attention to, even when we ourselves do it.