''Success Is Certain'' is the fifth studio album by rapper

Royce da 5'9" Ryan Daniel Montgomery, known professionally as Royce da 5'9" (or simply Royce 5'9"), is an American rapper, songwriter, and record producer. Montgomery is currently one half of the rap duo Bad Meets Evil with fellow Detroit rapper Eminem, an ...

released on August 9, 2011. The first single is "Writer's Block" featuring

Eminem Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), known professionally as Eminem (; often stylized as EMINƎM), is an American rapper and record producer. He is credited with popularizing hip hop in middle America and is critically acclai ...

, which was released in March 2011. Production for the album came from

DJ Premier Christopher Edward Martin (born March 21, 1966), known professionally as DJ Premier (also known as Preemo), is an American record producer and DJ. He is considered one of the greatest hip hop producers of all time. He was half of the hip hop du ...

Mr. Porter Denaun Porter (born December 7, 1974), also known by the stage names Mr. Porter, Kon Artis, and more recently simply Denaun, is an American rapper and music producer. He was a member of Detroit hip hop group D12 until its disbandment in 2018. ...

Nottz Dominick J. Lamb, (born February 21, 1977) better known by his stage name Nottz (or Nottz Raw), is an American hip hop record producer and rapper from Norfolk, Virginia. Nottz has produced for some of the biggest names in hip hop, including ...

, Streetrunner,

The Futuristiks Mike & Keys (formerly known as The Futuristiks) are an American hip hop production and songwriting duo from Los Angeles, California that consists of Money Mike (born Michael Ray Cox, Jr.) and J-Keys (born John Groover). History J-Keys, born ...

and The Alchemist among others. Guest appearances include Eminem,

Joe Budden Joseph Anthony Budden II (born August 31, 1980) is an American media personality and former rapper. He first gained recognition as a rapper with his 2003 top 40 single " Pump It Up" and as a member of the hip hop supergroup Slaughterhouse. In ...

, Kid Vishis and

Travis Barker Travis Landon Barker (born November 14, 1975) is an American musician who serves as the drummer for the rock band Blink-182. He has also performed as a frequent collaborator with hip hop artists, is a member of the rap rock group Tran ...

Singles and promotion

The album artwork, track listing, and related promo art (such as a full-website "takeover" on RapRadar) was created by Brett Lindzen. The official artwork was revealed on July 4, 2011. The artwork depicts a black

Rolls-Royce Rolls-Royce (always hyphenated) may refer to: * Rolls-Royce Limited, a British manufacturer of cars and later aero engines, founded in 1906, now defunct Automobiles * Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the current car manufacturing company incorporated ...

car parallel parked in front of the Detroit Savings Bank. The photo is in

black and white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...

. Instead of Royce da 5'9"'s full stage name, the cover shows only "R5'9"" with "Royce" written in smaller font below. The track list was revealed the same day with the availability for pre-order. "

Writer's Block Writer's block is a condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author is either unable to produce new work or experiences a creative slowdown. Mike Rose found that this creative stall is not a result of commitment problems or th ...

" was announced to be the first single from ''Success Is Certain''. It was released March 29, 2011, on iTunes. The song features

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...

rapper

, but only on the hook. It is produced by Streetrunner and Raymond (SAROM) Diaz. Royce da 5'9" originally reached out to Eminem for this song. Later, they started recording for Bad Meets Evil's EP, '' Hell: The Sequel''. It was confirmed that this would still be used on Royce's ''Success Is Certain''. "

Second Place A ranking is a relationship between a set of items such that, for any two items, the first is either "ranked higher than", "ranked lower than" or "ranked equal to" the second. In mathematics, this is known as a weak order or total preorder of o ...

" was released on June 14, 2011, as the second single from the album. It was produced by

. There were rumors that Royce had originally planned for this song to feature

Raekwon Corey Woods (born January 12, 1970), better known by his stage name Raekwon The Chef, or simply Raekwon (), is an American rapper. He rose to prominence as a founding member of the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan, which achieved mainstream succe ...

and

Method Man Clifford Smith, Jr. (born March 2, 1971), better known by his stage name Method Man, is an American rapper, songwriter, record producer, and actor. He is known as a member of the East Coast hip hop collective Wu-Tang Clan. He is also half of ...

, but did not because of the leak. Later this was confirmed false. "Legendary" was released on July 19, 2011, on iTunes as the third single from the album. All three singles from the album can be streamed at Royce's website.

Commercial performance

The album debuted at number 25 on the ''Billboard'' 200 with 16,000 copies sold in its first week released. In its second week, the album sold 4,700 copies to bring in a total of 20,700 copies to date. As of March 20, 2012, the album has sold 43,500 copies in the United States.

Reception

''Success Is Certain'' has received general acclaim from

music critics Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on ...

.Success Is Certain Reviews, Ratings, Credits, and More

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

Retrieved on August 27, 2011 At

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 82, based on 5 reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim". David Jeffries of ''

Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the dat ...

'' wrote, "Musically, the results are a brighter, tighter, yet more elaborate version of the man's best work, with tracks like "Security" and "Merry Go Round" sounding both flashy and meaty at once." Evan Rytlewski of The A.V. Club gave the album a "B" rating, writing "disorganized as it is, this is the environment he works best in, and ''Success'' smartly just lets him do his thing". Meka Udoh of '' XXL'' gave the album an "XL" review, writing "maybe influenced by Marshall himself, Royce has learned to channel his loquacious voracity into a controlled rage, and the end result is perhaps his most complete body of work".

Track listing

;Note *The track 3 "Merry Go Round" is replaced by "I'm Fresh" featuring Mr. Porter on the iTunes album version.

Chart history

References

External links

''Success Is Certain''
at

{{Authority control 2011 albums Albums produced by the Alchemist (musician) Albums produced by DJ Premier Albums produced by Mr. Porter Albums produced by Eminem Albums produced by Nottz Royce da 5'9" albums