My Music, My Way: Rick Ross' 'B.M.F.' Is MTV News' #4 Song Of 2010

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Rick Ross' 'B.M.F.' Is MTV News' #4 Song Of 2010

The Teflon Don's chilling street anthem places high on our year-end list of Top 25 Songs.
By James Montgomery

Rick Ross
Photo: Getty Images

Starting last week, MTV News began counting down the Top 25 Songs of 2010, a list that's already included the likes of Chris Brown and Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Eminem. Now, we're unveiling our #4 pick: Rick Ross's thrilling, chilling "B.M.F. (Blowin' Money Fast)."

They say in South Florida, it's not so much the heat as it is the humidity. And there were few songs released in 2010 as humid as Rick Ross' "B.M.F.," a track that's practically dripping with swagger and snarl, big-screen boasts and back-alley bravado. From its oft-repeated opening verse — "I think I'm Big Meech/ Larry Hoover" — to its doom-y, boom-y bass and stabbing synth strains, it's an unrelenting, unfathomably heavy thing; a blunt-force, concrete-slab of a song that no one besides the Teflon Don could wield.

"B.M.F." wasn't a huge mainstream hit, mostly because it wasn't designed to be. But from the moment it first premiered in May — on Ross' Albert Anastasia EP — "B.M.F." put both the streets and the clubs in a stranglehold, and it didn't let up for the rest of the year. And you get the feeling that's exactly what Ricky was hoping for. After all, the song is a masterwork of clenched-fist tension, starting with Lex Luger's taut, hefty production work and continuing right on through the dense wordplay, equal parts braggadocio ("Rozay, that's my nickname/ Cocaine runnin' through my big vein") and street-wise slang ("I got that Archie Bunker/ And it's so white, I just might charge you double"). No matter how you slice it — or break it up and sell it — this is the very definition of a street single.

Although Ross' detractors could (and did) point to the song as a prime example of his rather, uh, inventive imagination, "B.M.F." packs such a wallop that any debate about its authenticity seems rather pointless. Ross has always been a gifted storyteller, as evidenced by the wide-screen world he's created for himself, a downright "Scarface"-ian sphere of swagger and sophistication. And this song is perhaps his most accomplished work to date. It's a dispatch from the trenches of that glitzy world, a document of the hustle and the sweat that makes the whole thing possible. Ross' character (as it were) has always been double-sided: equal parts glamour and grime. Accordingly, "B.M.F. is the black yin to "Super High" 's white-suited yang. It's no wonder he sounds totally winded midway through — spinning a yarn this weighty is hard work.

In the end, it doesn't matter whether Ross actually moves keys of coke through Biscayne Bay, not when he keeps telling tales as unflinchingly hard and compellingly deep as "B.M.F." With his minks and Maybachs, mansions and machine guns, Ross' whole shtick may be downright fictional, but his talent, his power, his heft is unquestionably real. And this song is the thrilling, chilling proof. Hallelujah.

MTV News' Top 25 Songs of 2010 countdown continues. Make sure to keep checking back to see what song we've named #1, and don't forget to share your picks with us in the comments below!

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