Somewhere between 80s boom-bap, lit-hop, motivational hip-hop and nerd rap, Mic Rocca’s Salty Powers rides in with a funk-driven lo-fi instrumental and a chip on its shoulder that has been worked into wisdom.
The up-and-coming emcee and Randumb Enterprises founder built his path the hard way: writing at home when studio time sat outside the budget, then living in the booth once a workable rate finally opened the door.
Over a sample of The Whole Darn Family’s 7 Minutes of Funk, cleared through his own publishing company, Rocca waxes lyrical as a confrontation to the kinds of people who keep kicking others down to stand tall. It’s a humility-soaked flex, pairing recognition of other people’s greatness with the refusal to remain in shadow.
The performance has that old-school, knuckle-crack cadence hip-hop heads chase, with playful nerd-rap wit and motivational fire cutting through the pocket. It speaks to anyone watching people ahead of them turn bitter the second they start climbing too. The message lands clean: self-betterment requires no apology.
After the pandemic pushed Rocca into producing, recording and engineering himself, his self-reliance now feels baked into the track’s DNA. Fans of MF DOOM’s brainy rhyme-world, Rakim’s classic poise and Lupe Fiasco’s conceptual sharpness should clock the appeal.
Salty Powers is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify.
Review by Amelia Vandergast
No Comments