On Rather You Than Me, the ninth Rick Ross album in just over a decade, the Miami rapper calls himself “so divisive,” but that isn’t true anymore. At some point—probably around 2010’s Teflon Don—Ross became a strange point of consensus. He shrugged off the 50 Cent-led character assassinations; he came out looking like the lone success story from Jay Z’s reign as Def Jam president. (Jeezy blew up in this period, too, but the popular perception was that he was ushered into stardom by T.I.) This decade, even as the rap zeitgeist moves further and further from his aesthetic wheelhouse, he’s been a fixture at radio and on the albums of his famous peers. *Rather You Than Me *is a smooth, enjoyable attempt to wrestle the spotlight back onto his solo work.
A three-song stretch on the album’s A-side (“Trap Trap Trap” through “She on My Dick”) aside, Rather You Than Me plants itself somewhere off the Atlantic coast, on a yacht with saxophones and fine linens and Michael McDonald. The perplexing and endlessly impressive thing here is that while this style has mostly fallen out of vogue (J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League no longer has multiple singles in the Top 40), it still suits Ross incredibly well. From the grand, contemplative “Scientology” to the velvety “Santorini Greece,” the record frequently sounds more foreign than it really is, like a love letter to the long-ago Obama years. Both of those songs mentioned are produced by Bink!, the Virginia native who matched Just Blaze and Kanye West beat-for-beat on The Blueprint; they fit neatly alongside duets with fellow vets like Nas and Raphael Saadiq. Rather You Than Me is an album that’s comfortable in its middle age.
There are times when Ross seems to strain too hard to recreate “B.M.F. (Blowin’ Money Fast)” “Dead Presidents,” an otherwise very good, if impermanent, collaboration with Future, Yo Gotti, and onetime rival Jeezy, feels frustratingly like a retread. “She on My Dick,” with an assist from Gucci Mane, would be an admirable play for radio if not for its impossible-to-clean-up hook; the Young Thug- and Wale-featuring “Trap Trap Trap” is by far the best of the three, where the template is updated to allow more negative space, in fitting with 2017.
The most newsworthy song on the album is “Idols Become Rivals,” which is introduced by a Wing Stop-hawking Chris Rock and which flips a Camilo Sesto sample the same way the producer T.T. did for The Dynasty’s “Where Have You Been.” (As an aside: shouldn’t Jay and Beanie Sigel’s soul-baring on this beat be sacrosanct?) Ross takes Birdman to task over Cash Money’s notoriously suspect business practices, from his alleged refusal to pay producers their fair share to his treatment of Lil Wayne and the rest of the former Hot Boys. The subplot is that, after Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans, Birdman and Wayne moved to Miami (“You came to my city, nigga”). Ross casts himself as a custodian of Dade County—and, implicitly, of hip-hop—and he takes his post seriously.
Tucked toward the end of Rather You Than Me is the fifth installment of Ross’s “Maybach Music” series; unlike previous installments, which were either packed to the gills with guests or at least nabbed a lone A-lister, this one features the Detroit rapper Dej Loaf—an extraordinary talent, but, you know, not Jay Z. On that song, Ross says, “Maybe this my magnum opus,” but that isn’t true. It’s a veteran settling into a comfortable rhythm that will probably ferry him into legacy act waters at some point in the future. For now, it’s a quiet yacht ride.
