Cohn claims as influences oracular tunesmiths like Van Morrison and Paul Simon, and bands like Badfinger and Bread it’s a covers album with a time stamp, delimiting its menu upfront. A collection of songs released in 1970, by a fraternity of artists Mr. So his new album, “Listening Booth: 1970,” feels more honest than a conceptual ploy or a demographic appeal, though it’s assuredly both of those things. Cohn: they’re his way of orienting himself in the world, like constellations at sea. (Elvis makes a cameo.) His most recent single, from 2007, is “Listening to Levon,” a nod to Levon Helm, formerly of the Band. His first and most successful single, “Walking in Memphis,” from 1991, unfolds as a checklist of that city’s musical touchstones, from W. The singer-songwriter Marc Cohn has always been an eager student of his own field. “I built it ground up, you bought it renovated/Talking plenty capers, nothing’s been authenticated.” Depending how you look at it, it’s either the sound of rich irony or of the triumph of being atop the new pecking order. “Self-made, you just affiliated,” he raps here. Ross, whose career has survived the release of a photo of him as a correctional officer, remains unbowed. He borrowed his name from the former Los Angeles drug lord Freeway Ricky Ross, who recently tried to secure an injunction against the release of this album in connection with a lawsuit over the use of the name. Ross has always happily played around with ideas of authenticity.
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(Blowin’ Money Fast)” that’s one of the heads of the Black Mafia Family, now serving a 30-year sentence for running a drug trafficking organization, and the rumored leader of the Gangster Disciples of Chicago, serving a life sentence. “I think I’m Big Meech/Larry Hoover,” goes the hook of “B.M.F. Ross has his mind on some other (alleged) peers, though. (Blowin’ Money Fast)” and the always witty Gucci Mane on “MC Hammer.” (“Diamonds moving on my chest, doing the Hammer dance/70 grand make my jeans sag like some Hammer pants.”) and Jadakiss on “Maybach Music III” a sinister Styles P on “B.M.F.
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Ross is a smart selection of guests: T.I. League responsible for most of the sensuous production on “Deeper Than Rap” has the seductive allure of quiet storm R&B.Īnd joining Mr. “Aston Martin Music,” produced by J.U.S.T.I.C.E. He raps movingly about his parents on “All the Money in the World.” “Live Fast, Die Young,” featuring and produced by Kanye West, has the winning naïveté of Mr. “Teflon Don” isn’t the consistently sumptuous affair that his last album, the magisterial “Deeper Than Rap,” was, but it’s just as confident, a reminder that hip-hop social climbing isn’t monochromatic. Ross, who just a few years ago was compensating for his lumpy street talk with imposing personality.
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On the beat, oceanic drums and a wailing guitar, brought together by the producer No I.D., evoke a funereal mood. Singing the hook, Cee-Lo taps back into the grit of his Goodie Mob days, delivering genuine ache. Ross begins delivering lines in a measured fashion reminiscent of spoken-word poetry “Looking in the mirror but I don’t see much/Still running the streets so I don’t sleep much” the gaps between them adding heft to the emotion. Ross’s most striking songs to date.įollowing the clip of Mr. There’s “MC Hammer,” of course, the bombastic celebration of the rap good life, on which he boasts, over a martial Lex Luger beat, “I got 30 cars, whole lotta dancers/I take ’em everywhere/I’m MC Hammer.” But that comes on the same album as “Tears of Joy,” one of Mr. He’s a ferocious character, an impressive rapper and, as heard on this strong album, a clever and loose thinker, willing to try out new poses. “Teflon Don” is Rick Ross’s fourth solo album, and the one that establishes him as one of rap’s most potent and creative forces. That the rapper who’s pulled this off, and successfully at that, is Rick Ross is one of the great unlikely hip-hop success stories of the past decade. That it would happen on an album that also samples a Bobby Seale speech is unexpected. That someone would revive the memory of MC Hammer’s glory days and use it as an enthusiastic metaphor for modern-day rap excess was inevitable.