{"id":820259,"date":"2026-07-23T06:03:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T06:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/820259\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T06:03:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T06:03:09","slug":"rick-ross-set-in-stone-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/820259\/","title":{"rendered":"Rick Ross: Set in Stone Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Set in Stone, Rick Ross<\/a>\u2019s 12th album, the Magic City rap impresario deems himself the \u201cMiami Martin Scorsese,\u201d a bold, one might say outlandish, claim that nonetheless tracks with his penchant for over-the-top fiction. For 20 years, Rozay has refined a larger-than-life kingpin character, one that directs drug traffic and greenlights hits while anchored in Biscayne Bay, an iced champagne bucket always within reach. He\u2019s created a deep mafioso mythology for himself that\u2019s at odds with his reality as a former corrections officer turned fast food franchise and real estate mogul, but it\u2019s never really seemed to matter. Ross has been a reliable purveyor of opulent vacation rap, excelling at the kind of empty-calorie singles that go down smooth and leave no real lasting impact. His best songs are a blast, a third margarita in the afternoon, the sonic equivalent of strolling through a city\u2019s most expensive neighborhood thinking, \u201cYeah, I could live here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem is that he simply doesn\u2019t know how to make a great album. 2010\u2019s Teflon Don<\/a> came the closest, and there have been many strong, enjoyable moments in his lengthy discography, but his full-lengths are always uneven. He\u2019s one of those artists who works best on shuffle, good for soundtracking the immediate, front-facing satisfaction of doing deadlifts or throwing something on the grill. Every now and again, the music lights up pleasure centers in ways few other rappers can achieve; it\u2019s easy to listen to songs like \u201cSantorini Greece\u201d or \u201cTriple Beam Dreams\u201d and wonder what a full album made with that kind of focus could sound like. Set in Stone, like all Rick Ross albums, has a few of those flashes of inspiration, but they\u2019re offset by a sense of flailing, as though he\u2019s unsure of how to mark his 20th year in the game and where to go next.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

The Rozay hallmarks we\u2019ve come to know\u2014huge, expensive-sounding production; boasts of obscene wealth and unattainable lifestyles; that halting, syncopated delivery\u2014appear in short bursts, most notably in the first three tracks. The opening suite feels like Ross identifying his strengths but scoping them from different angles. \u201cMinks in Miami\u201d casts his hustler template as an \u201980s rock-the-bells anthem, enlisting Max B<\/a> and French Montana<\/a> to add to its blunt-force hype. The instrumental break on opener \u201cCaviar Bumps\u201d only lasts for the length of a verse, but it feels like it could go for an hour without getting old, creating an inviting, contemplative space that Ross doesn\u2019t always play in. The T.I.<\/a>-featuring \u201cMahogany Caskets\u201d is the best of the three, a booming bar fest that pits Ross\u2019s roomy flow against T.I.\u2019s overstuffed twang, its beat hitting like a comet strike. Later, we get the exorbitant elegance of \u201cCamel Meat\u201d and the sparkling, neon-lit diptych of \u201cPurple Fentanyl\u201d and \u201c#23.\u201d None of these songs update or stretch Ross\u2019s basic blueprint, but they feel welcome and familiar.<\/p>\n

In between, Ross tries out a whole lot of ideas without a whole lot of success. He turns to Atlanta for inspiration, specifically the spacey 2010s trap sound, but attempts like \u201cRing Around the Rolls\u201d and \u201cFace Down\u201d feel anonymous and overlong. Despite its competence, \u201cBig Fish\u201d comes off as a rote retread of the better tracks Ross and Gucci Mane<\/a> have made together over the years, all by-the-numbers bravado without capturing the energy we know they\u2019re capable of. He reunites with The-Dream<\/a> for \u201cCity Lights,\u201d a moody synth-pop jam that plays like a neutered version of the Weeknd<\/a>. Then there are the egregious missteps: Despite Ross\u2019 usually excellent ear, he chooses the chintziest, most Guitar-Center-demo-ass Casio groove for him and BigXthaPlug<\/a> to rap over on \u201cLiving Large.\u201d And \u201cPorsche GT3 – RS\u201d is just atrocious, as Ross squeaks out the last word of each bar \u00e0 la Kendrick Lamar<\/a> over a YouTube-type beat that doesn\u2019t even bother trying to copy a famous producer. All of this makes the album feel more like a mixtape in progress, scraped together from features cut from other people\u2019s projects. There\u2019s the seed of a good record in there, but the Bawse is apparently too Big for an editor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Set in Stone, Rick Ross\u2019s 12th album, the Magic City rap impresario deems himself the \u201cMiami Martin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[342,49,48,75,341,343],"class_list":["post-820259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}