"Last Breath", which smartly tabs Meek Mill (Ross' top underling) and Birdman (the bossest of all rap bosses) for guest verses, undercuts images of ringside seats and all-white Beamers with a feeling of queasy desperation and lurking mistrust. Ross has jarred himself out of his comfort zone and gotten his hands dirty, and in doing so he's also fleshed out an image of the boss as paranoid and constantly peeking over his shoulder. And when he does retreat back to the throne for a regal track like "Keys to the Crib" later on the album, there's an undeniably spiteful glee in his voice that's missing from his earlier albums. Ross calling his chain "the ghetto's guillotine" on "High Definition" or his Corvette "so clean you'll think Bruce Springsteen rent that" on "Fuck 'Em" or conveying his hunger for money by hilariously seething that he "likes his nachos hot" on "MMG Untouchable" is the mark of the Don at work, not content to merely build verses around the names of luxury sunglasses brands. "B.M.F." did happen to crest with his marked improvement as a writer, but it also magnified Ross' ability to pen spectacularly outlandish and vivid boasts, and he stuffs a vast number of them into the first four or five tracks here.
The opening quarter of Rich Forever especially drips with disdain, and though deviations into radio pop and the lush instrumentation he's long cultivated do pop up, Ross sets a tone for the record early that courses through every track that follows. There's the grinding churn of "MMG Untouchable", the haunted house bombast of "King of Diamonds", and the appropriately glistening keys of "Yella Diamonds", beats so good they render Luger's lone actual production ("Off the Boat") totally unnecessary. The best beats here- the ones that act as the backbone of the album- are appropriately sinister, and actually improve on the Luger template that has dominated street rap for the past 18 months.
The aggrieved sneer of "…these motherfuckers mad that I'm icy!" permeates the album, and the energy derived from Ross' contempt adds an important dimension to his character, one that was missing when he got too comfortable making 1,000-thread-count music. It's the first Rick Ross full-length with an attitude, and the result is a record where it finally feels like something's at stake for the Teflon Don. Luger produces only one song on Rich Forever, but his fingerprints are all over the mixtape, and its roots are firmly in "B.M.F.". "B.M.F." was Rick Ross as Dave Chappelle as Rick James yelling "fuck yo' couch," except the couch was actually his own. He chose cinematic, orchestral beats that colored that image perfectly, and while it was no doubt an effective strategy, songs like "Maybach Music 2" are the equivalent of a living room in a mansion where you'd be afraid to touch any of the furniture. In the four years between those songs, Ross kept everything but wealth and women at a distance. It's almost incredible to consider, but despite his stature and physical presence, "B.M.F." was the first intimidating Ross track since his debut single "Hustlin'", the first since then that pumped a dangerous amount of adrenaline into your veins. "B.M.F." is genius for many reasons, but there is one crucial aspect of the song that makes Rich Forever tick: It was the first time that Ross ever really got mean. In one fell swoop, Ross tore down his carefully assembled existence while simultaneously building up the one that paved the way for the career surge he's riding, which has culminated in Rich Forever, the new mixtape that now stands as his artistic pinnacle. The beat was so titanic that Ross- who had gone to great pains to protect the self-constructed image of himself as an opulent drug kingpin- shouted a chorus where he imagined himself as genuine, real-life drug kingpins Big Meech and Larry Hoover.
(Blowin' Money Fast)", the song that will go down as the indelible single of Ross' career. Ross was a successful artist before he ever hooked up with Luger, but his stunning transition from begrudgingly accepted popular rapper to one of the genre's most respected artists can basically be traced directly back to Luger's beat for "B.M.F. With both Rick Ross and star producer du jour Lex Luger at the top of the rap game, it's easy to forget how much of the former's career is now owed to the latter.
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