The Recession
Young Jeezy
Don’t be fooled. Young Jeezy isn’t about to drop an economics lesson. He’s not even about to castigate politicians. He’s here to save everybody with bombast, outrageous beats and crazy-eyed, name-dropping flow, and even though it’s not quite what we need, it’s damn close. On some tracks (“Hustlaz Ambition”) he builds tension with bar after bar of lean, skittish rhyme and then breaks it down into a glorious, frantic mess. On others (“By The Way”) traditional Young Jeezy takes over, and a huge, soaring wave of lush sound carries slurred, sing-song vocals. On the few tracks where he does get explicitly political, he takes on the familiar role of the remorseful, sensitive gangster but pulls it off a bit less successfully than others have. He’d be better off just sticking to playing Young Jeezy, a rapper with enough roles and enough creativity to last him this whole album and hopefully a lot more in the future.
Trilla
Rick Ross
Miami’s best prison-guard-turned-rapper is back swaggering over slick, exuberant beats about the rough life of the moneyed and white-nosed. Ross’ lyrical flexibility and depth have never been his strengths, and, for the most part, this album doesn’t point to a new direction for him. He only rarely lifts up his rhymes beyond the simple and short, his plodding enunciation and the exhaustive voice multi-tracking makes almost every track sound more or less identical. Later on, after the interlude from DJ Khaled, things start to get more interesting. “Here I Am,” “Speedin” and “Maybach Music” are probably the best tracks on the album, simply because Ross moves fast and switches things up for once, leaving both his lazy swagger and his standard-issue production far behind. Not coincidentally, the best tracks are also the ones where Ross brings in friends to help him out. This isn’t an album to pick up unless you’re absolutely addicted to what the boss Ross is selling.
