The Almighty RSO was a Boston-based collective made of up DJ Deff Jeff (not to be confused with the emcee and west coast transplant, Def Jef), E-Devious, MC Rock, Tony Rhome (not to be confused with Tony Romo or Tony Roma…whatever happened to that restaurant chain?), and Ray Dog aka Benzino, who you may remember from his shady Source Magazine involvement (which included he and his crew beating up some of the publication’s writers for their unflattering critique of RSO’s music, and later becoming part owner and ruining the magazine’s credibility and reputation due to his own personal biases and beefs), his feud with Eminem, or if you watch TV with your lady sometimes, like myself, you may recognize him as one of the cast members from Love & Hip-Hop: Atlanta. RSO, which is a double meaning acronym (Rock Shit On and Real Strong Organization, depending on which day of the week you ask them), started to bubble locally in the mid-eighties, before catching the attention of Tommy Boy Records, who would sign them to a deal. No music would be released during their Tommy Boy stretch, and shortly after signing the deal, MC Rock would be stabbed to death in a night club. After leaving Tommy Boy, RSO had a brief stint as part of Queen Latifah’s Flavor Unit, which would lead to them getting a record on the 1993 Flavor Unit compilation album, Roll Wit Tha Flava. RSO would soon sign a deal with RCA, where they would drop an EP, Revenge Of Da Badd Boyz, in 1994. Like the Tommy Boy deal, the RCA one wouldn’t last long and eventually, RSO would sign with J Prince’s legendary Houston label, Rap-A-Lot Records, where they would release their debut full-length album and the subject of today’s post, Doomsday: RSO Forever. One of the perks that comes with signing with Rap-A-Lot is having access to some of their in-house producers, and RSO would take advantage, as Crazy C (whose name you may recognize for his work with Scarface’s early output amongst others) would produce a chunk of the album’s tracks and The Hangmen 3 (which is the Boston-based production team comprised of Benzino, Jeff Two Times, and Johnny Bananas) would handle a large portion of the rest. Doomsday would also include production from a few other esteemed producers and feature a handful of special guest cameos that we’ll get into in a bit. Doomsday would produce two singles with one of them peaking at ten on the Billboard Hot Rap Songs charts, but the album failed to produce strong sells numbers. Ironically, Doomsday would mark the end of the group and RSO would be, done, forever (Benzino and E-Devious would re-emerge a few years later as part of a group called Made Men, but that experiment wouldn’t last long either). credits released November 19, 1996
