Persons whom Rawss inaccurately believes himself to be.

other than the glaringly obvious “Rick Ross,” of course.

Everybody pads their resume in real life, so of course everybody's going to pad their resume in rapdom. Wake up, sweetheart. But Ice Cube talking about things going bang bang or Akon describing moving packaged things across international lines to satisfy Americans’ insatiable appetite for narcotics is one thing; stubbornly believing your own myth is another. Rawss is hard-headed, and his outlandish-and-not-ever-based-in-reality brags are a constant part of pop music performance these days. It’s like my generation’s James Brown splits or the Townshend windmill.



1. The fuckin' boss. Convertible Burt.

(“Hustlin”)


“I touch work like I'm Convertible Burt,” your man says, “I got distribution so I'm convertin' the work.” Sounds good, except NO. He's got a spinning wheel of coke kingpins (cokepins?) in his living room, and he writes entire songs around whichever name the arrow happens to fall on. He also made a funny song about being Big Meech and Larry Hoover, remember? Oh goodness, I laaaaughed and laughed when I heard such a wacky proclamation. Rawss has absolutely no dealings with rubber bands or work of any kind, let me assure you. I'm more of a Pyrex scholar than he is. He carries weight, yes, but that just means he’s walking from room to room in his house! HEY-O.





2. a G. Your Machiavelli, with a murder hit.

(“I’m a G”)

Um, Pac is our Machiavelli. But even that is a stupid boast - we get sentimental in retrospect, but everybody hated that weak Makaveli stuff when he came out with it. Rawss can't win with me, though, because if he had said “I'm your Pac from the 2Pacalypse Now era, remember how good ‘Trapped’ was?,” I would have had an angry fit, outraged that he could compare himself to such a talented and foxy man.




3. “We Boys N the Hood, and n---a you lil' Tré.”

(“Deeper Than Rap”)

Hmm. Analysis time. As I recall, Tre had sex with Nia Long, wore some fucking fresh gear from Chess King, and then went to get a college degree at esteemed Howard University, sooooo: Rick you should probably keep walkin down the street scratching that Lotto ticket 'cause Tre wins this round.




4. “Bitch I think I'm Nino. Bitch I think I’m Scarface. Bitch I’m Al Pacino.”

(“Oh Let’s Do It (remix)”)


Oh how bout we not do it, but just say we did? That saves everybody some time. Here we have Rawss bragging about being 2 characters of fiction, and 1 real-live person - an actor - whose specialty is playing characters of fiction. They say change makes you wanna hustle. I say Rawss needs to change and stop preaching to me about the rules of the hustle because he knows not of what he speaks. When it comes to the hustle, I'd go to Nino for turkey-pass-ing-out lessons, Pacino for advice on the acting hustle. Rawss would probably offer “Don't get high off your own supply” regarding the businessman hustle, which of course he will have stolen from Robert Loggia, who was playing a character of fiction and whose words were not his own - they were written for him by Oliver Stone. I believe there is a pattern emerging here.






5. Mayor of Dade County.

(“For Da Low”)


Oh really? THE mayor of Miami-Dade County? Funny meeting you here, Carlos Gimenez! I had no idea you had a side hustle as a big fat rapper with an identity problem! Must be nice to have so much free time on your hands, but I’d like to remind you that he people of Miami elected you to get down to business. Now get the fuck to work on your promises to make public transportation more reliable and fix the financial woes at Jackson Health System. I mean it, mister.





6. “With the her-ion , n---a I'm Lebron/Quarter millie for my car, and thats on the Qu'ran.”

(“Finals”)

Lebron? The basketball player with no personality and the crazy mom?

You can't possibly be referring to the dude who came up short in the “finals” and is currently “without a ring,” can you? Nice comparison, genius.

I, on the other hand, am a fierce combination of championship winners Dirk Nowitski (blond), Bill Laimbeer (prominent elbows; I'm too skinny), and Oscar Robertson ('cause I'm known for “scoring” both inside and outside; OH HI THERE, BOYS). Also Raquel Welch in 1971 if you stand 200 yards away and squint really hard.




7. “Bitch I'm MC Hammer, I'm about cream/I got 30 cars, whole lot of dancers/I take them everywhere/I'm MC Hammer.”

(“MC Hammer”)


In addition to being completely charisma-free and a terrible lyricist, Rawss is also a lazy human being who can't take the time to read someone's entire bio before starting to co-opt that person's identity. “MC Hammer had a bunch of money and a Saturday morning cartoon! That sounds like me! MC HAMMER BACK; UNHHH.” This is like invoking the main character of the movie without watching it all the way through. Other people Rawss claims he is: JFK in October '63 and Joe Theismann during the first quarter of that Monday Night game.




8. Albert Anastasia. Michael Corleone. “Sole supplier for cocaine in southern states.”

(“The Transporter”)

My mom could write a pretty passable verse about Albert Anastasia and Corleone, since, like Rick, she loves those A&E shows about organized crime. She doesn't try to do it, though, because she has the good sense to know that she doesn't have the skill for rhyming. Manners, that's what that is.

Mike Corleone shows up on Rick's “Bricks” too. I guess this is OK in the grand scheme of Rawss-ery because any Godfather mention reminds me of that baptism scene, with the priest's voiceover in Latin. Fucking terrific filmmaking. And Sonny's body getting laced up with bullet holes and such, remember? Aw damn. Poor Sonny.




9. Frank Lucas. Floyd Mayweather. Don King.

(“Perfectionist”)





I've been told that Rawss should not be the focus of my hate, and that I should instead delve into the reasons that he has a fan base. Maybe he's just giving the people what they want, you know? Aha, but then I recall that Rawss' success can be explained by a Mencken quote, which leaves me free to continue my crusade against him! Can't knock the making-money hustle, but I can dang sure knock the making-terrible-music hustle. The kids today don't know any better but this makes Rawss no less morally reprehensible. He should not be someone who gets paid for saying words into microphones; simple as that. Anyway, as a person who greatly enjoys driving and rapping along to Crack and I have a lot in common/We both come up in the 80's and we keep that bas(s/e) pumping, I am well aware of the fun of temporarily adopting an identity other than my own for an intro-verse-verse-chorus-verse sequence. That's just the seduction of melody, people. The song above, for example (I love it). Or like when you're listening to pretty “Norwegian Wood” and then you realize, Hey wait a sec, this song's about Lennon having sex with someone other than his wife.

Anyway, the Mayweather comparison is probably the least offensive thing to me here, since Floyd makes his money by 100% legal means, just like Rawss always has despite what he wants you to believe. If Rawss had compared himself to Zab Judah, though? Goddammit Zab Judah has the baddest name in all of pugilism so Rawss and I would’ve had a problem.





10. “Got the top down and I'm feelin like Steve Austin/You know the routine, rollin on, still movin a few things.”

(“Trilla,” w/Mannie Fresh)


This one’s harmless too – Rawss comparing himself to a wrestler, which means Rawss is comparing himself to a man who adopts the costume, mannerisms and language of a person selling narcotics fighting in the ring for real, but alas: it’s choreographed. There was never any real danger! It was the wizard behind the curtain the whole time, except in this case the wizard really pisses me off because he convinced Mannie Fresh to do a song with him. Unacceptable.




11. “Twitter thug, I’m the timeline strangler.”

(“Molasses,” w/Raekwon)


Rae’s one of the many who’ve disappointed me by collaborating with Rick (I'm looking at youuuu, Trick Daddy). Not much else to say here, other than: Twitter thug made the list of persons whom he inaccurately believes himself to be because a Twitter thug is not an actual thing that exists. Putting those 2 words together; that's just gibberish. In the Four Tet remix he calls himself both a “unicorn 808” and a “Xanax burqa.” For such crimes against English, Rawss should be allowed to work with Drake and Chris Brown, nobody else. In between stints being guest speakers at the annual Dudes Who Will Not Be Seeing Me Naked Conference, they hang out with each other in the yard at Twitter jail when they take thugging a little too far. Then they can get released, and, back like they never left, put out horrible mixtapes on their own social media sites and free up space on RapRadar for the good MCs (Corey Gunz, SWOON).



12. “Oh Lord, I'm a star down in St. Bart's/The fat Tommy Lee, I made out with like 8 broads.”

(“Yacht Club”)


EW HE’S TALKING ABOUT HIS PENIS. I do like his brag circa-5th-grade brag, though (I made out with not just one girl, but several girls! I'm thinking of asking one of them to the dance!)




13. A Haitian vacationer.

(“Rich Off Cocaine”)


The only identity on this list that might actually be reality-based, I had to include it out of sheer anger. Embracing hatred gives me this nice burst of energy sometimes. Rawss' morally repugnant display of rich-man guilt provides this for me, in a nice rhymey package. Vacation to Haiti, it nearly broke my heart/Seein' kids starve, I thought about my Audemar/Sellin dope ain't right, I put it on my life/Chickens put me in position to donate the rice. WHAT A FUCKING JERK, spending all that time on Twitter and remaining so disconnected with world events. Even before a recent natural disaster there, Haiti was a place of corruption and poverty - not the appropriate place for you to take a few days off, gaze at the sunset, slurp lobster juice and purchase time with sex professionals. And yet, Rawss had to go look into some skinny 5-year-old’s eyes and hear him say Ou Linèt solèy yo ovèrprisèd ak lèd, obèz nonm. tou mwen trè grangou in order for that fact to become real.








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