What ensues over the resulting 17-track follow-up to their 2014 debut is part history lesson, part hip-hop manifesto. The concept of PRhyme (pronounced 'prime') itself is built on the concept of sonic innovation: Premier mines the sounds of one artist, exclusively - in this case, Philadelphia producer and songwriter Antman Wonder - then breaks it down and reconstructs it using his own signature, sample-based production style. But old man rap this is not - at least, not exclusively. The duo's second collaborative album, PRhyme 2, out March 16, continues to build on hip-hop's time-honored tradition of raw beats and ill rhymes. Yet Royce 5'9' and DJ Premier, in the thick of their respective careers at 40 and 51, are primed to defy the ageist divide.
In this new rap order, that frequently pits the purists against the pluralists, everyone has something to prove.
