Courtesy Def Jam Records I The Daily Mississippian
The release of Rick Ross’ sixth LP, “Mastermind,” will not reinvent the wheel. Ross never does.
His boisterous, grumbling voice has been larger than life for most of his career. It will likely always be large.
It seems the more he appears in controversial headlines each year, his voice gets larger, as he taunts from the top of the rap game, managing to cultivate an enigmatic, sometimes even villainous status. From the revelation that pulling back the curtain on his drug kingpin rhymes would reveal past employment as a correctional officer, to his series of seizures in 2012, to his Rolls-Royce crash in January 2013, the “Teflon Don” of rap has evaded what would seem like a definite hit to his hip-hop credibility, time and time again.
His most notable evasion of shame was the release of his last full-length studio album, “God Forgives, I Don’t,” a work of art that is sonically as pretentious as its name. Thankfully, rap fans are much more inclined to forgiveness than “the Boss” himself. With production so grandiose that it often eclipsed the boasts of the man in the forefront, Ross was often left to stumble about each track, drowned out by the enormous amounts of blaring horns, organs, guitars and guest features. By the time anyone had made it to hear Ne-Yo phone in a chorus on “Maybach Music IV” (“Maybach Music III” was already pretty terrible), most fans were wishing Ross’ album were as good as the mixtape released to promote it, “Rich Forever.”
Upon pressing play on the opening track of “Mastermind,” “Rich Is Gangsta,” it is beyond apparent that Ross doesn’t plan on switching up his lyrical bag of tricks. He’s as loud and in-your-face and as much of a braggadocio as he has been since his second album, “Trilla.” Present are all the huff-and-puff ad-libs that have characterized each of his album campaigns since the success of his 2010 single “B.M.F. (Blowin’ Money Fast).”
The sample of Average White Band singing, “Searching … searching,” during the album opener would indicate that the artist may be out of place in the landscape of the Black Metaphor-produced instrumental. Ironically, it sounds more like Ross has found himself, as he is more immersed in the beats on this album than recent memory.
Even when attempting to ooze his flow into laid-back records like “Thug Cry,” Rick Ross succeeds. Over a beat that shares its sample with alternative hip-hop staple “’93 ‘til Infinity” by Souls of Mischief, Ross’ gruff approach to rapping detailed descriptions of luxurious lifestyles strikes a strong contrast with a sincere offering from the ever-raspy Lil Wayne.
What Ross does best on this album that is absent from all of his previous efforts is try on new hats without allowing them to clash with the rest of his musical outfit. On album standout “Mafia Music III,” he enlists the help of dancehall titans Sizzla and Mavado to bring some West Indian flavor to his yacht rap aesthetic.
The trendy “bounce trap” made popular by Atlanta group Migos shows up on “War Ready,” a collaboration with one-time Ross foe Young Jeezy, via a colossal thump of a Mike WiLL Made It beat, and a chorus by Tracy T, a newcomer to Ross’ Maybach Music Group.
He even confronts his frequent comparisons to The Notorious B.I.G. head on by enlisting Diddy to cosign his 2014 rendition of Biggie’s swan song, “You’re Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You).” In what could’ve been a disastrous undertaking for a rapper often criticized for his lack of dexterity, Ross channels Biggie with little effort, via a relaxed internal rhyme structure. Lyrics like “On the pavement, born killers, body shivers, drug money, dollar figures, hustlers moving out of rentals, art of war is mental” lay onto the beat so neatly that the untrained ear could almost mistake it for the original.
“Mastermind” is not devoid of low points, however. It includes collaboration with Scott Storch that sounds almost as dated as the phrase “collaboration with Scott Storch.” The song, titled “Supreme,” prominently features off-kilter crooning by 1990s new jack swing pioneer Keith Sweat and banter from Katt Williams, who sounds like he just woke up before the engineer pressed record. Immediately following is “BLK & WHT,” which would be the closest thing to the grooviest four minutes on the entire album, if it were not for an ill-advised reference to Trayvon Martin. This comes less than a year after controversy regarding Ross’ verse on Rocko’s hit street single “U.E.O.N.O.” sparked a public outcry to educate people about consent and date rape.
When it comes to packaging albums into a cohesive product, Rick Ross, like many of rap’s current megastars, has often fallen flat. For an artist who frequently tries his hardest to fill his projects with as many groundbreaking events as possible, the sole groundbreaking achievement of “Mastermind” is that it will likely be the first truly cohesive project in his catalog.
