Richer Than I Ever Been

There is no shortage of confidence across Rick Ross album titles: God Forgives, I Don’t, Teflon Don, Mastermind, Hood Billionaire, to name a few. But with Richer Than I Ever Been, the Miami-hailing MC is not only crowning himself, but reveling in one of wealth’s most under-heralded privileges: creative freedom. The album’s 12 tracks stand in stark opposition to the contemporary trend of bloated and overlong rap releases, Ross coming across particularly forthright in his bars here. “I wanna stack my money, be a better father,” he raps on “Little Havana.” Elsewhere he’s drawing parallels between Emmett Till and George Floyd (“Marathon”), delivering one of the darkest strip club anthems in recent memory (“Wiggle”), and celebrating how far he’s come as a hustler (“Made It Out Alive”). He’s called on a shortlist of collaborators that span the eras of his career, including old favorites like The-Dream, Wale, and Wiz Khalifa and newer voices like Benny the Butcher, Blxst, and Yungeen Ace, and then, because the brand must remain intact at all times, he includes a voice note from Miami kingpin Willy Falcon (“Little Havana”), who, of course, thanks Ross for “keeping my name in your music for the past two decades.”