Rick Ross – Trilla

Def Jam 2008

Rating: 6/10

Much like his incarcerated namesake, Miami-based rapper Rick Ross has had two things on his mind since his debut Port of Miami: coke and cash. Or so his lyrics would convince a listener, as on hit single “Hustlin” and pretty much the entire rest of the album.

Things haven’t changed much in the two years that Ross worked on Trilla for. He still boasts, in that distinctive thick, basso voice that he “made a couple million dollars last year dealin’ weight” and doing “100 in the maybach, throwin’ money out the roof,” and still expresses his feelings in eloquent songs like “Money Make Me Come.”

While focusing an album on drugs and money isn’t a new or necessarily bad thing for rappers, it becomes one when the lyrics are saturated with clichés about wealth and bitches rather than the desperation and dangers of the lifestyle like Clipse’s Hell Hath No Fury last year.

Luckily, Ross’s connections save the album, with everyone from Jay-Z to Lil’ Wayne to the ubiquitous T-Pain dropping in, and an excellent and diverse production team headed by J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League creating an appropriately urban, tension-filled atmosphere.

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