There are still plenty of villainous synth vamps that cater to Ross' halting, self-satisfied delivery. League, No I.D., and Kanye West create beats that really do sound like they're fantastically out of reach to anyone but the financial elite, and you can hear every dollar that went into the record. It's fitting that his franchise is called "Maybach Music": J.U.S.T.I.C.E. Just because Ross and his producers rarely work in nuance doesn't mean they're not craftsmen.
While Teflon Don is fun to talk about conceptually, it would be a shame if Ross' growth as an artist went overlooked. 1", and while Drake proved every bit as capable of having rappers meet him on his own terms, his redux of "The Resistance" on "Aston Martin Music" is the awkward sound of two worlds colliding. Diddy would've catered more to the spirit of this record if he went in character as Sergio Roma instead of hyping up the overamped, ill-fitting rock moves of "No. The only times Teflon stumbles is when interlopers can't figure the lay of the land. Here, Jay-Z can refute possible ties to the Illuminati, Kanye is at his most aw-shucks disarming since 2007, and the third iteration of "Maybach Music" features none other than Erykah Badu on the hook. It's obviously a place where A-list rappers are in their comfort zone to do whatever the hell they want. Ross' greatest gift is the ability to conjure a fully-formed Planet Boss, a refuge from the dwindling fortunes of gansta rap and the general economic downturn, where rappers can and do film videos with as many speedboats as possible. Ross defiantly announces on opener "I'm Not A Star", "If I die today remember me like John Lennon/ Buried in Louis I'm talkin' all brown linen/ Make all of my bitches tattoo my logo on they titty/ Put a statue of a nigga in the middle of the city," and things really don't get any more modest from there. But Teflon Don also lacks the concessions to sensitive thuggery that bogged down Deeper, and it's also remarkably lean at just 11 tracks. If this album initially lacks the wallop of Deeper Than Rap, it's only because there's no longer the shock value in realizing that Rick Ross is making one of the better rap records of the year. Ross knows his lane and stays in it on Teflon Don. He threw the burden of believability out so fast that you could just sit back and cheer as shit blew up. But instead of filling his 2009 album Deeper Than Rap with a compendium of explanations and mea culpas, Ross did the exact opposite, exaggerating the most outrageous and ostentatious aspects of his music and persona to summer-blockbuster proportions. And when 50 Cent "outed" him as a former corrections officer, it could've been a career-killing PR disaster. His first two Def Jam albums sold well, but his bumbling performances on the mic did little to combat the view of him as merely Jay-Z's get-rich-quick scheme, someone to piggyback on the commercial momentum of dudes from the South rapping about hustling. Still, even the most patient and forgiving listener would've had trouble imagining that Rick Ross would ever be taken seriously.
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