Pay no attention to the money shit still whippin’ them Benzes. Forget about hustlers getting rich off the Yayo down in the M-I-A-yo. For all the surface sheen, Rick Ross’ working-class ghosts are right there in his major-label debut’s title. Like almost every other up-and-coming rapper these days, Ross spits cocaine rap. But while Ross rhymes about those drug-slinging staples--money, women, clothes--the name Port of Miami (Def Jam) brings to mind container cars and longshoremen, not the sun glistening off shiny superfast cars, the bare skin of leggy bikini-clad women, or the city’s posh, neon-lit, art deco nightlife. His songs explore the proverbial grind as just that--a job, with all the headaches and stress that go along with it.

Ross’ casual delivery and his album’s languid, matte production suits such a curious subject matter. He raps in a sleepy sibilance, elongating the final "s" of his name--and words that end in a similar snarl, such as "boss" or "house"--into a drawn-out hiss. He also likes to bark "s"-beginning words, turning "suckers" and "soldiers" into blunt ear jabs.

This style makes for a distinctive presence but not for a very agile rapper. Ross raps, regardless of the beat, like a big boat cutting through a smaller vessel’s wake. He laments that he didn’t have any "Polos until I started bagging it," before a mentor "showed me how to parlay a Z" to get into the life, but he chews both at such a taffy pace that they become a mumble that’s uninterested in the backing pulse. Throughout, Ross sounds like he couldn’t stick to a simple meter if he was staring at a metronome.

It’s not that the production is that particularly sophisticated or rhythmically ambitious, either. Port of Miami’s producers--Jazze Pha, Cool and Dre, the Runners--lay down an easygoing speaker rattle behind Ross’ big voice, neither bombastic nor adventurous. Sonically, Miami is somewhere between Houston gully heaviness and Atlanta party music, not as aggressive as the former or as flamboyant as the latter. Ephemeral keys and synth lines provide most of the texture atop the simple, strolling bass lines. It gives Ross a modest mood to work in and around, complementing his workingman’s vibe.

And when Ross’ style, lyrics, and beats are in cahoots, it makes for strangely compelling rap music. The brassy theme from the 1970s TV cop show S.W.A.T. underscores "I’m Bad," the usual parable about what it costs to be the boss. But after the boasting first verse, Ross settles into a slang-laden enumeration of the attitude it takes to stay there, promising "I’m bad, I’m back/ I’m mad, I’m strapped" and sounding like he’s sweating such top-dog living. It’s a lifestyle maintained through labor’s sweat--"‘B’ for the bullets and the niggas who gotta die/ ‘A’ for the addicts and junkies who getting high/ ‘D’ for the dope distributed at the dock"--and it’s tiring, exhausting work.

"I’m Bad" is followed by the ephemeral "Boss," a buoyant, fuzzy bass beat laced with background "la la" chants that go through all the perks that come with being the titular kingpin. The song feels like a dream, though, as if Ross is imagining the good life that supposedly comes from all his hard work but which he never quite gets to enjoy. A few songs later, Ross practically sighs, "I’m 24-7 like IHOP," turning cliché braggadocio into a hair shirt.

Nowhere does the grind of work weigh heavier than in Ross’ current monster single, "Hustlin’." The song, the first to mark 1 million ringtone downloads before the album’s release, is built around a skeletal drum kick and click-track flutter, over which Ross turns a cocaine-rap anthem into a Willy Loman monologue. He runs through the usual ego-inflating claims--"the real Noriega owes me a hundred favors," "Ya want the pretty things, I’m the one ya need to ask"--and then, slowly, he starts repeating the same words, as if he’s too tired to come up with new ideas:

Don’t tote no twenty-twos, Magnum cost me twenty-twoSat it on them twenty-twos, birds go for twenty-twoLil’ mama superthick, she say she twenty-twoShe seen them twenty-twos, we in room two twenty-two.

Arthur Miller used recurring phrases--"He is not just liked, but well-liked," "Isn’t that a remarkable thing"--as leitmotifs whose meanings changed with each utterance in Death of a Salesman, but they also telegraph mental weariness. That weariness is omnipresent in the entire syrupy chorus of "Hustlin’," where the repeated "Every day I’m hustlin’" turns the final word itself into a three-syllable sigh.

Although not approaching the sanguine maturity of Scarface’s A-game, "Hustlin’" and Port’s framing device--its skits are news flashes about a drug bust and arrest, the thorn in every dealer’s side--suggest that Ross might be aiming for that sort of gravity. He doesn’t quite succeed in sketching a fully nuanced picture of the life of an urban drug dealer--and the ill-advised foray into Dirty South balladry, "Hit U From the Back," almost ruins everything here thanks to lines as atrocious as "Now I’m like a ghost in the white Phantom/ Take her home, fuck her in a wife manner"--but give the man some credit for even trying out cocaine ennui. Port of Miami is nobody’s idea of a good hip-hop album, but its lyrical tentativeness makes it a fascinating, if ultimately merely average, journey.

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