Underrated: Rick Ross' Verse in "We Takin' Over"

Unspeakable beauty...



Don't get it twisted: Rick Ross is not a great rapper. He might not even be a good rapper. He is, however, a big rapper. And he knows it.
DJ Khaled's "We Takin' Over" is currently blowing up on radio and MTV, which honestly is great, because I'll support any sort of exposure for a song featuring both T.I. and Lil' Wayne. There's a lot of things about "We Takin Over" that I like, a few of them being Khaled's "We tha BEST!" proclamation, Akon emoting all over the mic like it's underage, and the fact that Birdman's verse is by far the briefest. Yes, Weezy's verse is the best, but we all know that was a given. T.I. name-drops a lot of cities he's been to, which would be mediocre if not for Tip's signature laid-back drawl. Dude could probably rap about Medicare and it would be convincingly cool.
Then there's Rick Ross and Fat Joe -- a duo of large men who have a couple of sorta-respectable hits under their oversized belts. Fat Joe seems like a nice guy, even though he rolls with Terror Squad and will never be as good as his mentor, Big Pun (R.I.P., Punny Pun). I wanna like his verse, but he loses me when he says, "Feelin like 'Pac, all eyez on me," which is a cheap, bullshit line. As for Rick Ross... well, he made the song "Hustlin'", which is an okay banger, and I can understand Khaled's desire to throw a Miami MC a bone, but c'mon, he doesn't deserve to be in this song. Right?
Wrong, motherfucker. Ross drops the second-best verse of the song, and since #1 is Lil' Wayne and #3 is T.I., that's pretty impressive. Some of his rhymes are clumsy, but Richard kills it for two reasons: the grizzly-bear delivery, and the stunning wordplay in the second half of the verse. Rick Ross sounds both really pissed and really confident, and his gravel-throated rhymes crunch even harder after the shiny-smooth flow of T.I. and the ball-less crooning of Akon. The best part? The way Ross constantly slows down and drags out single-syllable words, because even if Ross can't keep up with the shit-hot beat, he at least manipulates his wordplay to make the ebb-and-flow sound downright necessary. Seriously, this dude sounds like he means business; he's clearly the hardest-sounding MC on the cut, even though he really hasn't done much more than drop one successful single and eat some celebratory bacon. Whatever works, man; your mission to sound like you belong is complete.
It's hard to make out every word that Ross drops, but listen closely, because there are pretty some great lines here. As soon as Ross spits out, "Get shot up like Shyne," he's got a hold of me, and it just gets better from there: "I'm B.I.G. like Diddy/ Damn it, I'm wit' it/ Khaled we did it, Biggie of my city/ Please not fitted, fuck it, I'm too pretty/ The rappers can get brain, stupid, I'm silly/ Money that come, runnin like water/ Mommy so hot, damn it, she's gorgeous/ Miami on fire, better be cautious/ Might get shot on the porch of your fortress". Yeah, it's not Def Jux, jaw-dropping brilliance, but these are above-average lyrics for a rap radio anthem. When Ross declares at the end, "I run in 'cause Rick Ross is boss shit," all one can do is shrug their shoulders and admit, "Yeah, I guess Rick Ross IS boss shit".
So next time you listen to "We Takin Over", raise a finger up not just for T.I.P. or Lil' Weezy, but also for Rick Ross, who seems to have hit a home run in an all-star game he never should have been allowed to play in. The biggest rapper of them all has some muscle after all.