First things first: I don’t give a flying jack about Rozay having been a C.O. in the past. Everybody get on their grind while they have to. No matter what that might be. As long as you’re not snitching on your people, it’s cool with me.
Also – I love Ross for what he’s done so far. He’s put out some QUALITY music over the past years. But, let’s keep it 100: he’s gotten lazy. The bigger his status got, the lazier he’s gotten. God forgives, I don’t was…mjeeeeh…aight… But what’s up with this The Black Bar Mitzvah-thing?!
Let’s put all the ridiculous-artwork and title-stuff aside. Let’s focus STRAIGHT on the music. Let’s call it how we see it: it’s lame. Word is bond.
I’ve seldomly heard a project as monotone and uninteresting as The Black Bar Mitzvah. Almost EVERY song sounds the same, with heavy (808) basslines, sped-up hi hats and a gruntling Rick Ross, assisted by occasional guest appearances.
Tales of coke snorting, drug trafficking, hoe banging and bottle popping – the MMG-magic formula – repeated during 18 tracks of musical monotony and lyrical, artistical, pseudo-made man-jibberish!
That was the first spin. I really wanted to like this mixtape, so I gave it a second try. Nope. Still the same. While young cats like Kendrick Lamar or A$AP Rocky push the envelope and try to advance into new spheres of an old fashioned aesthetic, Ross seems too settled in his ways.
It feels like the hustler persona he’s established over the years, got chubby and moved to Miami (no pun intended).
Where there was pure game and hustle-antics in the past, you now have blueprint-ish, predictable, exchangeable verses of identical subject matter, with almost no „swag“ at all.
When Tony Montana went off with a tremendous ending, being shot for being too greedy and paranoid, the rap-version of Freeway Ricky Ross seems to die in cold silence, due to the fact of being too self-righteous and modest with his original hustle…
R.I.P. – Rick Ross, a hustler we used to love.