5 Roc Marciano ‘656’ Lyrics That Will Have You Making the Screwface

I’ve said a variation of this before, and I’ll probably say it every time bro drops an album, but here it is: no one makes robberies, shootings, and other acts of criminality sound as cool as Roc Marciano. In his stories, the bad guy always wins — stylishly, at that. Think Kay admitting to herself and Michael Corleone that she should’ve known he was invincible: “I suppose I always knew you were too smart to let any of them ever beat you.” Except in this version, Roc replies, “exactly” before speeding off in a foreign whip to go do some other acts of villainy.  And I — and by "I," I mean, “we” — will eat it up. Every. Time. 

Just like I’m doing with his latest album, 656. Even for a brief project, it’s densely packed with bars that are as incisive as they are effortless. I’ll probably change my mind about the order, but here are the five best lyrics from my first few listens. 

1. “Tried to avoid the streets, but the beef keep calling me, and I just keep eating horribly—Arby’s/Firearms in the jeep, ‘90s R&B, Sean Connery” — “Childish Things” 

In just a couple bars, Roc describes the inevitability of violence and his appetite for it, with the whole beef metaphor folding into a 4k image of a smooth gangster in the image of a Block Boy James Bond. Cutting, graphic, and pristine AF. 

2. “You need a man to fix everything/You a mechanic’s dream/It’s rare you see these hands are greased/The only chance it’ll be is in Santorini, Greece”— Melo 

Note: Roc Marci is very anti-trick, and his disgust for quasi Johns spills out as fluidly as his images of a mediterranean vacation. 

3. “Air Max 360 the sweats/Had 360 waves on my head for every brush that I had with death/But not even death can make me acquiesce”— “Yves St. Moron”

Man. Stop playing. 360 waves. Brush with death? Effortless defiance. Calm. Totally unpredictable finishing rhyme.  Unaffected. Easy.  Probably my favorite sequence on the whole project. 

4. “If I ain’t top 10 the list was created by atheists”—”Trapeze” 

Yeah, I’ll cosign that. I just like the confidence and concision here, and where it lands on the beat. 

5. “Cut off so many freaks that fancy me you might randomly meet an amputee/B****es missing hands and feet like some damn marines” — “Melo” 

It’s really the seamless imagination Roc brings to these bars. There’s no ornate setup for a punchline; just observations where metaphors fold out like a couch with a mattress in it. The amputees part would’ve been enough, but then he juxtaposes it with images of damaged soldiers. Just cold. 

Now, go check out the rest of the album for yourself.