No Radio is not the best song on the album. It might not even be the second best. I don't really care. The last verse on the song has been slaying me since I first got the album. The song has this heavy low end, distorted and slinky. The first two verses are thuggish and traffic in the violent, misogynist, and materialistic noise that has come to define the genre. I make an excuse for a lot of these artists (admittedly, not all): this is an art and their fans have come to expect certain things. Violent and materialistic rap moves units. Still, it's tough to make excuses for some of the stuff, say, Rick Ross raps about, especially since he was never "trapping" but instead held a 9 to 5 as a prison security guard. Rick makes it all the harder by failing to show even a hint of self-awareness. At least give me some Jay-Z style interview where you denounce a lot of this language or explain your music is an art and you don't literally mean what you say. Something.

The last verse on No Radio rounds out the song and gives me that hint of self-awareness. Spoken from the view of a would-be mugger, the verse is a refreshing dose of humanity in an otherwise stone-faced genre. The crime is a desperate and sad last resort in an otherwise broken life. I am not even going to get into the social statement. Shit, at least it's a statement at all.

No Radio