The 25 Best Rick Ross Verses of 2011

Ricky Rozay has been on one all year long.

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Complex Original

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Rick Ross had a huge 2011: Turning around Wale's career was no easy feat, and that was just his part-time job. Rozay was responsible for several of the year's biggest songs, dropped numerous guest verses, and transformed Maybach Music into one of the foremost labels in hip-hop.

Compiling his best verses was fun, but talking about them was more of a challenge. Like a politician delivering variations on the same stump speech, The Bawse has a few bullet points that he makes sure to hit in almost every song. Call it lyrical branding.

He's wealthy, has name brands in tropical locations, and can hurt you easily. The Feds are watching, but he'd never snitch. He has an eye for color. Many of his verses include a bit of vaguely regretful spirituality—a single line asking for forgiveness, or a chance at heaven.

He's essentially managed to take everything you know about gangster rap's kingpin archetype and embody it completely, offering variations on a straightforward formula every time. And we can't get enough. Here's 25 more reasons why Ross is still the biggest boss that we've seen thus far.

Written by Drake Drake (@somanyshrimp)

25. Travis Barker f/ Lil Wayne, Swizz Beatz, Rick Ross & The Game "Can A Drummer Get Some"

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Best Line: "10 chains round my neck, haters wish it was a noose."
Producer: Travis Barker
Album: Give The Drummer Some
Label: Interscope

This verse parallels last year's “Monster” intro with the same stampeding energy. It might be difficult to imagine Blink-182's drummer handing Ross the pump-action, but otherwise his lyrics here have a propulsive drive, from his haters wishing his chains were a noose to the suggestion that his cars are large to better reflect his physique.

24. Nas f/ Rick Ross "Tower Heist"

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Best Line: "I profit so nice, me and dog going to count it twice/It's poppin' tonight, roll a weed, give me a light."
Producer: Salaam Remi
Album: N/A
Label: N/A

The incredible “Tower Heist” single adds a fairly straightforward spin to your standard Ross verse; throw in a few references to a robbery, and Ross is good to go. I like to imagine Ross paying his ghostwriter (as prolific as he is, he must have hundreds on call at all times, typing verses on thousands of typewriters) while explaining the process. “So the deal with this one is, I'm the exact same dude I always am."

Only this time, at some point, someone robs someone else. It's a large amount of money, so we should also talk about how we're going to spend it. “ Just kidding! Ross writes all of his own verses—his style is too consistent to be writen by committee—and per usual his wardrobe gets more attention than the minor setbacks that might bog down any other rapper's career.

23. Juvenile f/ Rick Ross "Power"

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Best Line: "Power is something that get a nigga's questions answered."
Producer: Mannie Fresh
Album: Rejuvenation
Label: UTP/Rap-a-lot

When Juvenile and Mannie reunited for "Power," who better to guest on the track than the rapper whose entire persona revolves around the appearance of it? Ross's verses have a tendency to revolve around memorable imagery—while his line about the purpose of power cuts closest to a thesis, it's his use of fragrance as a euphemism for the allure of money and drugs that's most memorable.

22. Red Cafe f/ Ryan Leslie & Rick Ross "Fly Together"

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Best Line: "I need my women mobile, I make the bitch a mogul/Double-M-G is global, still rolling one for dolo."
Producer: Ryan Leslie
Album: Shakedown
Label: Bad Boy/Konvict Music/Interscope

Ross's paternalistic attitude towards women can be hard to justify, but he does such a good job of making his life seem a sublime pleasure that it could make the average man jealous—never mind how women might feel. If you've ever wondered how to grade diamonds, or what it's like when a Boss tells you to take the day off, then perhaps Ross's OKCupid profile is worth looking into.

21. Lil Wayne f/ Rick Ross & Drake "She Will (Remix)"

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Best Line: "Every summer I celebrate with a new estate/Lets get the fuck out this club, call it the great escape."
Producer: T-Minus
Album: N/A
Label: N/A

Ross reunites with “I'm On One” producer T-Minus over an exotic string loop. The rapper decides to play with his rhyme scheme; the first half of the verse has the same pattern, matching “that” “at” “floor mats” and “stacks,” eventually transitioning at bar nine to four bars of “-ake,” and finishing off with a pair of couplets.

The effect is a pick-up in momentum, as Ross kicks into gear before describing a connection between himself and the dancer: “My life's a stage, I need it just to stand in / Every time she look back, I toss a band in.”

20. Ludacris f/ Rick Ross "Do Something Strange"

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Best Line: "She super sexy so i treat her to my Wingstop/I'm trynna wet my dick and shoot off like sling-shot."
Producer: Drumma Boy
Album: 1.21 Gigawatts: Back To The First Time
Label: Disturbing Tha Peace

Luda's comeback mixtape found the rapper joined by one of the year's most productive guest artists. While Drumma's beat counts time, his guest recounts what he did while Luda was asleep at the wheel, an adventure that peaks in its second line with Ross's plan to shoot off like a sling-shot.

19. Red Cafe f/ Rick Ross "Faded"

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Best Line: "Two homes on the block/Each one a mil and this ring on my finger is an E-1 deal."
Producer: Boi 1-da
Album: Above the Cloudz
Label: N/A

Koch deals used to be the stuff of diss tracks–Lil Flip famously argued, “after your album flop / you gon' be on Koch.” Now known as E1, the label is used to signify extraordinary wealth in Rick Ross verses. If that doesn't tell you something about the state of the music industry, nothing will.

Ross' verse for “Faded” centers on the use of violence to get laid; while unnamed targets of Ross' wrath try to lock down their buildings, Ross enjoys the company of Brazillian women on E. He concludes the verse with an allusion to Biggie's classic “Bad boys move in silence and violence,” transposing it to his sexual conquest.

18. Wale f/ Rick Ross & Jeremih "That Way"

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Best Line: "Gianni Versace connoisseur, a carnivore/Accountable for half a million unaccounted for."
Producer: Lex Luger
Album: Self Made Vol. 1
Label: Maybach Music Group/Warner Bros.

Jeremih had the best part of what had been Wale's biggest single to date, but Ross's verse was thematically consistent. In keeping with the track, this one is strictly for the ladies—or at least, the ladies who wish to join a rap star in a cross-country jet-set lifestyle. Perhaps the best moment on the verse is its final line, which hints at the fragility of the whole illicit operation with cinematic verve: “accountable for half a million unaccounted for.”

17. Rick Ross f/ Wiz Khalifa "Retrosuperfuture"

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Best Line: "Lets call us some bitches and have a good time/A lot of bottles of Vodka as we forget time."
Producer: Young Fyre
Album: Ashes To Ashes
Label: Maybach Music Group

When it comes to empty philosophizing while observing undulating weed smoke, Ross can rap with the best of them—so he knew how to speak to Wiz's audience. It helps that his entire style seems to have a sort of vacant, open-to-interpretation center; anyone can project their own fantasies onto him.

Ross focuses on the here and now; there's no musing on the moral implications of his lifestyle, as he might attempt (with religious overtones) on other tracks. Nor are there any attempts to outdo the next trap rapper in describing methods of inner-city torture.

Instead, the Bawse's most impactful line is a reference to drinking: “A lot of bottles of vodka as we forget time.” Can anything better describe the kind of substance abuse present here?

16. The Game f/ Rick Ross & Beanie Sigel "Heavy Artillery"

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Best Line: "Torture and extortion til the Fortune 500."
Producer: StreetRunner, I.L.O.
Album: The R.E.D. Album
Label: DGC/Interscope

Everyone knows Beanie Sigel is a beast, so Ross had to stand apart. On “Heavy Artillery,” he manages exactly that, focusing on internal rhymes to add variation to his flow. “Torture and extortion til the Fortune 500,” he raps, giving his rhymes an accelerated triplet feel.

His entire purpose is that he brooks no compromise, before hitting a few lines based around numbers to close out the verse, contrasting the familiar “carried-by-six” funereal mentality with the three square meals he's earned as a free man.

15. Big Sean f/ Rick Ross & Pusha T "100 Keys"

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Best Line: "I play the keys, handle dope, barry manilow/The game a bitch but at times she sweet as canteloup/Hit the road, ki of coke in the manifold/Triple-beam dreams with a trunk full of scattered clothes."
Producer: WrighTrax Productions
Album: Finally Famous (Deluxe Version)
Label: G.O.O.D./Def Jam

While Ross's verse for Big Sean's “100 Barz” is a fully formed success from start to finish, it's hard to top the opening lines, which set the scene for his mythic struggle in a series of disjointed images and implied significance.

“Triple-beam dreams with a trunk full of scattered clothes” is a linguistically intricate way to express the desperate melancholy and hope of life in the interstate drug trade, the thin line between risk and reward.

14. Meek Mill f/ Rick Ross "Work"

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Best Line: "The game sweet, so the seats watermelon/Clip full of sunflower seeds in my mac 11."
Producer: Lex Luger
Album: Dreamchasers
Label: Maybach Music Group

“Work” has one of the dryer beats in the Luger catalog, which required Ross and Meek Mill to fill an otherwise empty canvas. Ross was up to the job, boasting about international travel before reaching the verse's strongest moment: The sweet rewards of the drug game are compared to watermelon, which in turn is the color of his car's seats, and we associate watermelon with seeds, but it's sunflower seeds that remind him of his mac-11 clip. Of course, he compresses this entire pattern of ideas into two quick lines, a victory for economy of thought.

13. DJ Khaled f/ Rick Ross, Plies, Lil Wayne & T-Pain "Welcome To My Hood"

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Best Line: "Fuck ya house note nigga, blow that bitch on a bottle."
Producer: The Renegades, DJ Khaled, The Nasty Beatmakers
Album: We The Best Forever
Label: We The Best/Cash Money/Universal Motown

Rick Ross makes an art out of a very simple template; coming up with unique ways to hit a few major themes (quality of jewelry, those pesky Feds, refusal to snitch, and the recognition of a vague morality with religious overtones).

In "Welcome 2 My Hood," the Bawse touches on each of these—of special note is how he manages to combine the latter two into one clever line to save time ("Lord forgive me for my sins, that's my confession.")

12. Pill f/ Rick Ross "Pacman"

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Best Line: "Blew a mill ticket, one night at King Of Diamonds/Me and Puff Daddy, bitch I'm the King of Diamonds!"
Producer: Young Shun/DJ Spin
Album: Self Made Vol. 1
Label: Maybach Music Group/Warner Bros.

For Ross's Pill collaboration, there's none of the lyrical imagery or the variation in flow that makes his other verses stand out; instead the purpose seems to be blunt repetition and a mantra-like focus on ways to explain the nature of Ross's financial situation (In a word, it's solid.)

11. DJ Khaled f/ Rick Ross, Drake, Lil Wayne "I'm On One"

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Best Line: "Ever made love to the woman of your dreams. In a room full of money out in London and she screams."
Producer: T-Minus
Album: We The Best Forever
Label: We The Best/Cash Money/Universal Motown

T-Minus's beat for “I'm On One” was 2011's masterpiece—it was atmospheric, but the hook was instantly memorable, which is something most artists can't live up to. While Wayne's verse had a staggering drunkenness, and Drake's was soaked in solipsistic insecurity, Ross best handled the production's epic largesse.

His lyrics, from the smoke burning his chest to the image of him walking on clouds, complement the beat's spacey vibe perfectly, and he makes sex in London feel like the pinnacle of human existence. But what gives the verse a dramatic underpinning is the recognition that it could all fall apart at any moment: “...even though I'm out on bond I might be facing eight....”

10. Wale f/ Meek Mill & Rick Ross "Ambition"

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Best Line: "Ambition is priceless and that's something that's in your veins."
Producer: T-Minus
Album: Ambition
Label: Maybach Music Group/Warner Bros.

“Ambition,” from Wale's record of the same name, found Ross opening up a lot more than usual on the personal side. Each word seems imbued with deep meaning; “I saw momma praying, as she wait on results / It was hot in the kitchen, can I wait on the porch?” Ross also talks about his absent father, and the timeless trap of poverty in a way that feels believable and relatable.

9. Ace Hood f/ Rick Ross & Lil Wanye "Hustle Hard (Remix)"

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Best Line: "24s on my Beemer never know when i sliiide up/19 in my nina red dot when I ride up."
Producer: Lex Luger
Album: Blood, Sweat & Tears
Label: We The Best/Def Jam

Because Ross' verses can have a fairly predictable pattern – hit the big thematic bullet points, toss in a few internal rhymes, clock out – one of the most vital aspects of his work is flow variation, and nowhere is that more evident than in the remix for Ace Hood's “Hustle Hard.”

His opening lines show the kind of rhythmic diversity that immediately grabs the listener's attention, setting up a verse that has a nice transition between counting money and addressing haters who might count him out.

8. Estelle f/ Rick Ross "Break My Heart" (2nd Verse)

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Best Line: "Peel the top back, gettin higher than the higher power/Makin love in the penthouse then its saiyonara."
Producer: Don Cannon
Album: All Of Me
Label: Atlantic

No one indulges in the fruits of wealth quite like Rick Ross. This opening couplet is one of his best this year. The imagery is memorable although it's hard to imagine Rick Ross actually painting his Lamborghini—we're pretty sure he means he paid for that to take place.

This verse even features an unexpected ending; after getting higher than “the higher power,” a line which blends nicely with the breezy, above-the-clouds feel of the production, Ross' sexual conquest ends with him falling in love. Awwww.

7. Meek Mill f/ Rick Ross "Ima Boss"

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Best Line: "No love, cry only when babies die."
Producer: Jahlil Beats
Album: Self Made Vol. 1
Label: Maybach Music Group/Warner Bros.

In a year of atmospheric syrup- and stoner-friendly production styles, “I'ma Boss” was one of 2011's few triumphant anthems. Ross's rhymes on the original version of the track fit the track like a glove, each larger-than-life boast a portrait of the kind of mythical kingpin who strides through the streets like a giant.

Virtually every lyric was Ross at his most quotable, from “Fuck a blog, dog!” to the verse's ultimate moment of contradiction: simultaneously nihilistic and sensitive, Ross proclaims that the only thing that makes him cry is infant mortality.

6. French Montana f/ Rick Ross & Wiz Khalifa "Choppa Choppa Down (Remix)"

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Best Line: "My jewels drip like ice/Now suck my dick all night."
Producer: Billionaire Boyscout
Album: N/A
Label: N/A

One of Ross's briefer guest appearances, “Choppa Choppa Down (Remix)” doesn't lack for action or drama. His flow hits a series of even eighth notes for two bars before dividing each into two-part lines with a pause in the middle, in which he coins the title of his upcoming record God Forgives... I Don't.

And with a quick dismissal towards the end, the Boss flippantly disregards his one true enemy (the gossiping hip-hop sites that transformed rumor into confirmed fact) with the ultimate trump card: an invitation to oral sex.

5. Lil Wayne f/ Rick Ross "John" (First verse)

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Best Line: "Shoes on the coup, bitch i got a Nike shop/Count the profits you could bring em in a Nike box."
Producer: Polow Da Don, Rob Holladay
Album: Tha Carter IV
Label: Cash Money/Universal Republic

This track, of course, is primarily memorable for Rick Ross' appearance in the video as the same character he always plays, only in a velour sweatsuit and sitting in a wheelchair. Ross's verse relies on two basic car-related themes; a double-entendre about shoes (on his car, Nikes, and Nike boxes holding bundles of cash), followed by a familiar color-wheel riff; Ross' red 9-11 is the same color as the infrared beam.

4. Drake f/ Rick Ross "Lord Knows"

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Best Line: "Murder-cedes Benz or that bubble double R/Headlights flicking, looking like a falling star"
Producer: Just Blaze
Album: Take Care
Label: Cash Money/Universal Republic

While the bulk of his verse on Drake's “Lord Knows” traffics in the signifiers of wealth that we're well familiar with at this point, Just Blaze's epic production seems to bring out something extra in Ross. The emotional impact doesn't quite translate to the page. There are a huge number of memorable lines, from Ross' shouts to the Tribe to his admission that his true love is the pen.

But the most memorable moment comes when he describes headlights that flicker like a fallen star. To Ross, there is an aesthetic perfection to success, parallel to a child's awe when beholding stars in the cosmos. His passion is writing about success as if it were the natural order of things, and we're all still innocent enough to be impressed.

3. Pill & Rick Ross "Pandemonium"

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Best Line: "Armadillo cigars, killers who like to play golf/Heroin transactions, with Russian shots of the Smirnoff."
Producer: Lee Major of The Inkredibles
Album: Self Made Vol. 1
Label: Maybach Music Group/Warner Bros.

Easily one of his more lyrical moments of 2011, "Pandemonium" kicks off with all internal rhymes, painting a picture of wealth with deftness: "No more peanut butter sandwiches, now we fucking with loaves." As a writer, one of Ross' most under-recognized skills is his ability to make some acrobatic lyrics seem unexpectedly fluent and effortless, and never is that more true than on this verse.

2. Meek Mill f/ T.I., Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Birdman, Swizz Beatz & DJ Khaled "I'ma Boss (Remix)"

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Best Line: "Had a couple seizures, call that minor setbacks."
Producer: Jahlil Beats
Album: N/A
Label: Maybach Music Group/Warner Bros.

The hip-hop world was taken aback when the Teflon Don suffered two unexpected seizures earlier this year. Vulnerability doesn't really mesh with Ross's overall persona, hence his immediate dismissal of the illness, followed by a light-hearted line scoffing at death. But front-to-back, Ross kills the "I'm a Boss" remix, from the assonance of cutting the clean work like carrot cake to the pair of double-entendres (cavalier, arenas) that wrap up the sixteen.

1. Rick Ross f/ Drake "Made Men"

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Best Line: "My yayo Usher Raymond, that bitch just keep on dancing."
Producer: 2Tall
Album: Ashes To Ashes
Label: Maybach Music Group

On Drake's “Made Men,” Ross opens with a line straight out of the Gucci playbook (check out the latter's opening lyrics on the Triple C's “Trick'n Off”). The rest of the verse has a similarly playful feel throughout, flipping through a celebrity rolodex of metaphors to weave stories of Ross's stupendous wealth. The feeling ain't fair.

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