Trilla (Bonus Track Version)

Rick Ross has remained faithful to the immortal gangster parable of Scarface, a story set in his hometown of Miami. Like Tony Montana, Ross favors the gaudy and the exorbitant over the subtle and the clever, but he also shares something deeper with Pacino’s monomaniacal hustler: his ruthless cunning. From its list of superstar cameos to its pack of top-sheld producers, Trilla is an album designed to succeed at any cost. To bask in the opulence of “This is the Life” or “Luxury Tax” is to imagine oneself a boss, overseeing a kingdom from the roof of a Miami mini-palace. While Ross’s modus operandi is extravagance beyond all reasonable imagination, Trilla throws its audience a couple of outstanding curveballs. On the J.R. Rotem-produced “The Boss,” synthesizers are indistinguishable from human voices, and the song’s undulating, otherwordly tones make for a mood that is as haunted as it is fearless. In “Money Make Me Come,” sex, drugs, and money are folded into a single potent obsession; a culmination of sin and sleaze, the song is Ross’s truest moment to date.