Sa-Roc is close to celebrating a whole decade in the Hip Hop industry.

The first thing you’ll notice when listening to her new album The Sharecropper’s Daughter is the aggressive clean production by Atlanta producer Sol Messiah. Sol Messiah produced all but one track (Deliverance, produced by Al-B Smooth and Evidence) on the new album.

Sol Messiah continues his relationship with Sa-Roc, after having produced the majority of the tracks on 2015’s Gift of the Magi, Sa-Roc’s last album released 5 years ago. This time around Sol Messiah’s production is more controlled and Soul-heavy than the previous album, complementing Sa-Roc’s more aggressive articulate flow.

One of the first tracks on the album is Rocwell’s America featuring The LOX’s Styles P. Sa-Roc flips the Norman Rockwell’s ideology of Four Freedoms by spitting:

“This is a portrait of America that Norman couldn’t master / but crack rock well-suited for the capture / whole hood hostage to that white in the glass / but because the prisoners black, it wasn’t labeled a disaster”

Styles P solidifies the message on his verse:

“I am Malcolm and Mandela / from the concrete jungle with knowledge of sand dwellers / shout to the sisters / smoking while I listen to the ancestors whisper”

P continues by ending his verse with a no-frills message:

“To my Black bro and Black sis / Keep your Black thought and Black fist / yeah, I’m always on some Black shit / probably got me on their blacklist / I’m willing to die for these Black kids / are you willing to die for these Black kids? / we gotta survive for these Black kids / we gotta be wise for these Black kids”

One of the dopest songs on the album is The Black Renaissance featuring Black Thought.

Black Thought blesses the track by giving props to Sa-Roc:

“Me and Assata, my ATLien alter ego / the Queen of Sheeba and Musa Keita, produce a heater / salute your teacher, my newest seed is a future leader / a testament of my evolution of excellence / to be or not to be human, that’s what the question is / I’m still the answer regardless, rappers is moving targets / acknowledge me as the smartest passenger moving forward / my little sister bars blast like Kalashnikov / just because, heavy bass, dance like Baryshnikov”

Sa-Roc returns the gratitude by dropping the lines:

“I’m scripture embodied / holy sixteens turn a fiend to redeemer / picture of pious, quoting my verses, like / I’m second coming, that’s just one way that I’ve been heard described / I’m Obatala crossed with Tupac / and the cost is all eyes on me when I occupy space, immersed in white / cause I’m lit like a Seven Day / my third eyelid stay wide open like it’s broken, it’s unsettling / it’s a high risk going up against my pedigree / it’s Black Thought and Roc, the Ibis and his Padawan”

The most impressive thing about this album is while Sa-Roc has access to some of the dopest MCs in the game, she commands the majority of the album’s tracks by herself, something even more seasoned MCs rarely accomplish on a studio album.

Her top solo tracks include Something Real, Deliverance, Lay It Down, r(E)volution, Goddess Gang, Forever and 40 And A Mule.

Sa-Roc comes hard on 40 And A Mule spitting rapid fire dope lyrics:

“Cause I’m young, black and gifted, blood / that’s the type of traits that make you a statistic, blood / first they chuckle, then they copy your existence, blood / but I’m bespoke, DNA patterns encrypted, blood / that’s Black gold, them Mansa Musa bricks / Sahara Desert glow, head scarf with a loose stitch / politicking off the coast of Amalfi with two hitters / sipping gun powder, eating a Moroccan cous dish, God”

The production and lyrics on this album are much harder and more pronounced than the previous Sol Messiah and Sa-Roc collaboration. Sa-Roc’s flow will definitely attract fans of hard-core block beats. Don’t get it twisted though: Sa-Roc has a heavy R&B influenced style that still shows through the harmonization and hooks throughout the album.

But as Sa-Roc says herself on the final track Grounded:

“You can’t tell me nothing / you might like an image / but you don’t really love me / I got too much in me / for you to take it from me now / that’s how I learned to be free”

Sa-Roc will definitely earn new fans with The Sharecropper’s Daughter while solidifying her position in the game.