Roddy Ricch & The Sophomore Slump (Article)
What up one & all. Sky Bento here once again on the check in. Hope you and yours are fine & well, protecting your mental health, drinking your water, knowing the vibes and all. So I’ve been having and hearing a lot of talk about Roddy Ricch as of late. The majority of these conversations have hurt to had. Talented as he may be, the hype around Roddy has completely dissipated. Nobody is saying he’s whack thankfully, but where he entered the game and where he sits at now are night and day. Let’s not waste anymore of your valuable time. We gonna get right into this.
As always, these are just my opinions and do not reflect the views of TDN as a staff, record label, or as a m*********** crew. If you disagree, feel free to crucify me on Twitter @plzsaythebento AFTER you read it.
The Come Up
So first of all let me out myself and my bias: I am a huge Roddy Ricch fan. I’m not going to say I was early on the Roddy wave (pun intended and owned), I first heard Roddy on “Die Young” like the rest of us. I wasn’t even up on Feed Tha Streets 2 like that. I just ran “Die Young”, “Down Below”, “Every Season” & “Project Dreams” with Marshmallow on YouTube until my dog GMD Jets put me on to “Ricch Forever”, the first crazy Roddy Ricch song to completely skip an official video. To this day I’d argue it’s his best song and a cardinal sin that mans ain’t even got it on streaming services. I mean, even Tory Lanez’s remix of it dropped with a music video. But regardless, there was a sense of humility working alongside Roddy’s hunger. It felt as if Roddy almost didn’t know he was about to get as big as he did.
After a few incredibly important cosigns not the least of which from one Nipsey Hussle (which led to a Grammy win) Roddy not only had eyes on him but expectations. Now if I can be candid for a second, personally my expectations of Roddy were hinged on the fact that Roddy’s strengths did not lie in traditional rap music. I had noticed it as early is “Project Dreams”. Roddy’s voice & ear for melody put him in another category entirely seprate from most of his contemporaries. Is Roddy the first artist to place more emphasis on vocal inflection and melody than actual lyrics? Of course not. Roddy is very much a child of Young Thug & Future musically. But the raw talent on display was undeniable.
THE DEBUT ALBUM
At the tail end of 2019 he delivered his debut album, Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial. And man did he deliver. While it’s true that this album is another melodic trap album released into an ocean of melodic trap albums, Roddy Ricch’s signature style felt refined as much as it felt new. The album also greatly succeeded in feeling like a cohesive listening experience complete with fitting features, top notch transitions between literally every track, and heavy gospel influence in his melodies. Roddy even included a choir on the album outro “War Baby”. And this is to say nothing about the album’s amazing TRACK 2, “The Box” which beat even Justin Bieber for the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100.
Now not only did Roddy not stand completely separate from his peers in the fact that he was not a flashy clout-chaser doing anything to get out of the hood, he was branding himself as something different. He was owning being antisocial, quiet, humble. The album as Roddy explained both on and off wax showed that it was a product of Roddy’s environment and circumstance that makes him keep his distance. Both his Tiny Desk performance and Audiomack Trap Symphony performance put Roddy’s star on full display. Musically at least, he could become bigger than rap. It was an exciting time for Roddy Ricch & Roddy Ricch fans alike.
This was all happening around the turn of the new decade with rap fans itching to find the stars of the next generation. Roddy Ricch was positioned alongside artists like fellow XXL Freshmen DaBaby & Megan Thee Stallion as a leader of the new school. Then, just as the world needed him most, he vanished. Of course, a global pandemic explains it enough. And given how honest he’s been about his mental health, I’m sure Roddy struggled with adjusting alongside some personal hardships like we all did. Nevertheless, he retreated at the height of his career. He was quiet outside of a feature or two (like DaBaby’s “Rockstar” which absolutely was the song of that first Summer with Covid) and a leaked song with [redacted], the biggest artist in the world, that still hasn’t been officially released.
He promised continuously he was taking his time with his next project, which only raised already high expectations that much more. When he finally did return with Live Life Fast, there was hardly anything that separated it from the millions of melodic trap albums that had dropped since and before the arrival of Roddy’s debut. Gone was everything we had come to love about Roddy Ricch. Instead we got another album about being rich and living a rapper lifestyle. The album even released with noticeable issues in the mixing. In the end, Roddy’s sophomore effort came and went with little fanfare. No big singles, viral moments, or anything dominating conversation outside of talk of Roddy falling off which inevitably led to him leaving social media alone for a little bit.
This happens far more often than you think. Roddy is just the latest victim of the dreaded sophomore slump. But why is it that second project that usually fails? In some cases artists lose their hunger. They are no longer performing like their lives depend on it because they’ve already made it. That disconnect can play out in a lot of different ways but regardless how it does, it always shows in the music. In other situations we’ve simply become accustomed to their style and if they’re not actively bringing anything new to the table, the music can be a letdown. When an artist breaks out and becomes the hot new things, everybody wants a piece. So not only do we get music from the artist themselves, they’ve now got to deal with other artists taking inspiration from their work. In many cases this includes not just contemporaries, but the artists who’ve inspired them in the first place in a bit of a full circle moment. Sometimes even pressure from the record label to deliver a certain sound or style of music can leave an artist creatively bankrupt or at the very least stifled.
I think that in the case of Roddy Ricch it is a combination of all of these variables. Roddy Ricch came out the gate performing at a high level, got a lot of eyes on him very quick and just wasn’t able to meet the ridiculously high expectation the public had for his music. Does this mean he’s done for good? Of course not. Roddy Ricch is incredibly talented. But Covid has affected us all in unique ways. Roddy is human just like us after all, and beyond that he is a rapper. Upon achieving success, it makes sense that his music would lack that same hunger and urgency, and with him not being an in-your-face personality to begin with its easy to see how he could get overlooked and counted out. But one thing’s for sure. For the short time he was delivering a high volume of quality work, he’d given us everything we need to consider him a leader in the new generation. So the talent is definitely there. Eyes are still on him enough, he’s doing decent numbers on Youtube still. But he came out the gate with so much hype and praise that he will forever be compared to that standard, whether it’s fair or not. Only time will tell if he’s able to reach it again.