Rome Streetz has come a long way since dropping Death & The Magician alongside the legendary DJ Muggs, and his Griselda Records debut Kiss the Ring back in 2021 and 2022, respectively. I’ve always felt like he began his climb to King of New York contender status with those projects.
Since then, he’s dropped nothing but heat including a couple tapes (which I talked to him about previously) in Hatton Garden Holdup and Trainspotting, the latter of which made our 2025 year-end list of the 20 Best Rap Albums. Rome has also gotten major love from a couple rap legends with Nas not only saying that he’s next up, he also signed him to his Mass Appeal label, while Wu-Tang Clan‘s Method Man posted a video of himself listening to the very album we’re here to talk about today and called it a classic.
Now, after dropping Sock It 2 My Pocket, the New York City rapper is looking to elevate to a new level, and as a matter of fact, he’s been doing just that as he recently found himself at this year’s ESPYs where he met Mike Tyson and was told by a couple New York Knick players that they fucked with his music. “Jose Alvarado and KAT knew who I was,” he said about the surreal experience. “They were still buzzing from what they got going, though. It was beautiful being there. It was just a good feeling. Like I met Mike Tyson. I was stoked about that s—t. It’s Iron Mike, man.” It’s part of the reason why he feels like he wanted to put together a body of work that would take his career to new heights.
Instead of working with one producer like he did with Daringer and Conductor Williams as he did on the aforementioned projects Hatton Garden Holdup and Trainspotting, he decided to wrangle a collections of producers that ranged from all-time greats, like Pete Rock, 9th Wonder, Havoc and The Alchemist, to the underrated V Don and Denny LaFlare, to relative unknowns like Russian producer Ssllahi, who made his way on the album after cold-tagging Rome on Instagram.
He might still lean on that gritty, East Coast sound that has become less mainstream over time, but that doesn’t mean that songwriting and crossover appeal isn’t there. Tracks like the head-nodding “Cocaine Coltraine,” the Drum & Bass leaning “Time & Place,” the futuristic “High Speed” and the ’90s inspired “I Don’t Know” would all be getting consistent radio play in a perfect world.
Since the advent of the music industry’s streaming era, the lines between the underground and the mainstream have become blurred. Everyone uploads their music to the same streaming apps and are competing for the same ears on release night. Rome is just as aware of these blurred lines as the audience and the industry are. “Underground rappers wouldn’t consider me an underground rapper now,” he says. “I have an underground rapper mentality, as far as how I want to create certain things or how I want to be perceived, but I got mainstream artist ambitions, so it’s like I’m kind of teetering on the line of both.”
He doesn’t really care whether he’s considered mainstream or underground, though. His only focus is to continue making the music that he wants to make after signing a multi-album solo deal with Mass Appeal recently. “I don’t even know,” he answers when asked if he considered himself to be an underground rapper. “I don’t consider myself to be a mainstream rapper because I feel like mainstream rappers got hits and s—t. They’re more focused on trying to get on the charts. I’m not. That’s not really my focus. My focus is to just gather as much notoriety as I can, and still not compromise what I do.”
Rome stopped by the Billboard office in midtown Manhattan to give a track-by-track breakdown about how one of the most pivotal albums in his career came together. Check out his breakdown below.
