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Rick Ross: Master Of Someone Else’s Reality in ‘Hold Me Back’

Rick Ross

Rick Ross’ God Forgives, I Don’t is another epic, empty Rick Ross album. He’s repeating the success of Deeper Than Rap and Teflon Don — both entertaining, well-crafted listens that did all the things that they needed to do, but nothing more. Now, Ross is rap’s biggest star, so he coasts a little more than usual, with the aid of the most expensive-sounding beats this side of Kanye West, because, well, who else is going to get them these days? Unlike, say, that strange Roc-A-Fella era when an amoral eccentric like Cam’ron was privy to a sample clearance and beatmaker budget of the highest caliber and took full advantage, Ross is someone hiding inside the beats, letting them do all the work.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=HVO5WhIm4uI%3Fversion%3D3

Moreso than on his warmed-over album, the video for God Forgives‘ street single “Hold Me Back” best sums up Ross’ feckless take on street rap. It was shot in New Orleans’ Calliope Projects, a fact I know not because of the video, which makes no specific reference to its locale, but because of a surprisingly well-wrought “behind the scenes” video more than twice as long as the video, released a few weeks ago. In the music video, Ross and director, Taj, turn a loaded and specific locale into a generic “hood”; Ross, growling out a fantasy about how kilo-selling has made him millions, sits at the center of this dislocated scene. Contrast the video with the behind-the-scenes footage, which in just the first few minutes finds room for a significantly more varied and complex group of images: A close-up of a “R.I.P Trayvon Martin” t-shirt; a young rapper giddily boasting that he once opened up for Meek Mill; a group of children jumping around to Lex Luger like they’re the kids from Peanuts.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=MK1PFUpvnDk%3Fversion%3D3

And that’s the point of the “hood” video. It documents a place often unseen by the mainstream and affords it some humanity. It’s a reminder that these people — those people to far too many Americans — do not live one-note lives of suffering. Shots of scary, scarred-up young and old men, the frame packed with shirtless dudes mean-mugging, without context or counterpoint, turns these real people into symbols of “realness.” More “poetic” than poetic, the image of a little girl spinning around alone in overgrown grass, is condescending. Ross talking on a pre-smart phone cell, the chosen mode of communication for the d-boy, is gross. Swizz Beatz throwing out shoes (with stylish blood stains on the toe) to residents is even worse. Here is a Miami rapper setting a video in a New Orleans neighborhood, smearing their “authenticity” all over him, carelessly invoking political pop-art music videos like Juvenile’s “Ha” (shot in the Magnolia projects), and turning the residents of his host city into an anonymous supporting cast for a superhero drug tale. Go back to fantasyland, Bawse.