RENAISSANCE OF A BOSS

One of the world’s best-known rappers takes on creativity (sort of).

Every day, Ross is hustlin’, as he reminded us repeatedly in his 2006 debut single, and this book is no exception. It starts with the hip-hop star and entrepreneur bragging about the success of his two previous books and his signing a new two-book deal with his publisher (“My shit was about to be a whole damn series. Fuck Harry Potter. Rozay was coming for his spot”). He decides that his next book—this one—would be about creativity, and he spends much of the rest of it trying to figure out what to write, taking readers inside his thought process. He writes about collaborating with Bill Murray, a disastrous psilocybin trip that ended up with him waking up in his bathtub surrounded by EMTs, and his affection for cannabis. Most entertaining are his anecdotes about his plan to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, which he eventually abandoned at the behest of his doctors and sister, and a road trip he took with stops at the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, Graceland, and the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo. (Sadly, he did not attempt the restaurant’s famous 72-ounce steak challenge, the Kilimanjaro of beef.) What does any of this have to do with creativity? It’s unclear to the reader, and maybe Ross, too, but he does toss in some well-worn advice about changing up one’s routine, not waiting for inspirational lightning to strike, and ignoring “all the naysayers and doubters.” There isn’t much cohesion here; it’s more a series of rambling anecdotes, good-natured boasting, and odd meta moments about writing the book itself. It’s undeniable that Ross is smart, curious, and charismatic, and that buoys the book somewhat, but readers looking for a work that truly explores creativity should look elsewhere.

Fun at times, but mostly digressive and inessential.