Rick Ross - Trilla Review

With his second record, Miami MC Rick Ross helps out the environmental cause by recycling most of his much-lauded debut. What carries the rotund rapper are his booming voice-of-God flow and his aura of authority. He really knows his kilos, cash, and strippers. His details and perspective are vivid and compelling, but he's far from a nimble MC. He repeats words for rhymes with numbing results, and he's clearly spinning more wheels than tales. When surrounded by his all-star guests, they expose his limitations. Lil' Wayne's pretzel-twisting language on "Luxury Tax" makes Ross sound like a primitive (the added presence of Young Jeezy and Trick Daddy doesn't help)....full text Rick Ross has one supreme asset: the thundering basso-profundo voice that threatened to puncture a million sub-woofers when his drug-kingpin anthem "Hustlin'" went massive back in 2006. On the Miami rapper's second album, little has changed: The voice still booms, the cocaine and cash still arrive by the boatload, and Ross' beard is still as thick and majestic as an Afghan tribal elder's. Trilla sets Ross' stentorian flow against sleek, synth-swamped beats by producers such as J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League and the Runners; "The Boss," produced by J.R. Rotem, is goth crunk, with Ross and T-Pain trading lines over eerie vocal chorales straight out of a Fifties horror flick. The beats are terrific — the problem here is the MC....full text For all the criticism thrown at Rick Ross' debut -- redundant, nothing new, by the numbers gangsta music, and so on -- the man himself had little reason to reconsider after the album climbed to the top of the charts. Add up his guest appearances and mixtapes and he's a walking bankroll, so it shouldn't be too surprising that his style and attitude toward the album format has changed little on his sophomore release, Trilla. For Ross, the full-length is a place to hold the singles -- big, slick, and grand singles that are hard, hypnotic, and just what's needed to get a gangsta party started. Even if initial single "Speedin'" didn't dominate the way he would have hoped, the follow-up anthem "The Boss" and the sleazy "Money Make Me Come" are killer, the latter being especially infectious and extra shameless....full text