Rick Ross - Teflon Don (2010) [Def Jam] // Grade: B

“I think I’m Big Meech/Larry Hoover.”

This is the line that opens “B.M.F.” off of Rick Ross’ Teflon Don, released last week. While according to the parentheses, “B.M.F.” ostensibly stands for “Blowin Money Fast”, it’s also a fairly obvious reference to the Black Mafia Family, an Atlanta-based drug operation tangentially connected to Young Jeezy busted by the CCE act in 2006. As far as anyone knows, Ross has no real connection to the BMF. Nor does he have a solid connection to Larry Hoover’s Gangster Disciples, or to the real Rick Ross, the infamous crack dealer that flooded the streets of L.A. in the 1980s and was claimed to be supplied by the C.I.A. As everyone knows by now, Ross, government name William Roberts, was a corrections officer in Miami in the mid-90s.

It’s impossible to talk about Ross without mentioning this almost obsessive fetishization of gang life and drug dealing that’s coupled with former life as a uniformed law enforcer. When he first burst onto the scene in 2006 with “Hustlin’”, in which he claims “the real Noreaga” owes him a hundred favors, we had no idea who the fuck this guy was, or what he was about. Free to build his own storyline, he constructed a massive one, based on nebulous anecdotes like getting “Rich Off Cocaine” airbrushed on his Tims and constant drug-talk. So when the Rawss-gate hit rap in 2008, it seemed like he was toast.

Except, somehow, he wasn’t. He had turned himself into a larger-than-life character, an avatar for the most gangster aspects of rap. In a way, rap listeners had been privately recognizing that a large number of gangster rappers over the last ten or fifteen were either greatly exaggerating or straight up lying about their past. Ross was our collective relief, where we could finally listen to this guy talk shit, know he was talking shit, and still be okay with that. Rap blogs like the trap music-connoisseurs Dirty Glove Bastard could publicly deride him as “Officer Ricky”, but still post his tracks. Ross, on his part, felt like he had to prove himself after the scandal came through between his second and third albums, and delivered with a surprisingly solid third effort, Deeper Than Rap. Filled with lavish beats and rhymes about expensive living, he was able to reach back to the highlights of Bad Boy’s late 90s style and pull it ten years forward.

On Teflon Don, he attempts this trick again. Another relatively short album filled with mostly expensive sounding beats, Ricky is again feeding us tales of big money, drugs, and fancy cars. A recent trend in writing about Ross is that this album is his best because he’s become a better rapper since he debuted with “Hustlin’”, while that might be true, his growth hasn’t been overwhelmingly noticeable, to me at least. He was always fairly solid, now he’s just really solid, though still delivering some questionable rhymes (“If she died on my dick she would live in my rhymes.” What?). The staleness comes with the fact that a lot of this album sounds more or less like a track-for-track rehash of Deeper Than Rap, which isn’t an awful thing, but doesn’t really add much to the Myth of Ross. Why would I listen to “Maybach Music III” when I could listen to its prequel released last year and hear Ross rap about the same shit, but with better guests? Ross has always had choice production, and switching his style up from DJ Khaled-helmed Miami rap epics to J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League-directed New York-styled rap epics worked for an album, but it’s just okay here. The style really gets exposed on the awkward, ham-fisted “Tears of Joy” with Cee-Lo, though the clever “Free Mason” with Jay-Z works pretty well.

Ross still has the ability to surprise. Much like the title track opener of DTR, the album opener here, “I’m Not a Star”, is a ferociously spit, hookless monster, riding a J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League-produced beast in the style of Shawty Redd (yes, it’s a monster riding a beast). The two other album highlights, “MC Hammer” with Gucci Mane and the aforementioned “B.M.F.” with Styles P, also go for the gothic trap style beats, both provided by the excellent Lex Luger. If Ricky wanted to fully embrace his bullshit next album and make an album full of trap bangers, I’d be okay with that. Ricky’s a survivor, and somehow thrives for all his contradictions. He’s kinda like rap incarnate, and that means I can’t really hate him. Teflon Don is a pretty solid turn, but hopefully he pulls out some new tricks for his next super-expensive project.

- Walkmasterflex