Glass Ceiling Project starts with “Rose Gold”, which finds up-and-coming Detroit rapper Ro Spit muttering to himself and name-dropping Nas while rapping prosaically over a soulful beat. The next track, “Forfeit” begins with guest rapper Freeway, the biggest star here, giving a simple “uh”. Yet that monosyllabic grunt from a 10 year veteran sounds hungrier than Ro manages to sound on his whole album. Ro raps like a dude who has better things to do with his time, and his rhymes lack the hunger one would expect from a rapper who doesn’t yet have a record deal.
Still, Ro Spit can bring the heat when he wants to. The first half of Glass Ceiling Project is hit and miss with disappointingly sluggish production, but it turns around at halftime with Ro clamping down on his mouth guard and coming out hard over violent snare hits on “Fly MC”. What follows is the strongest stretch of songs on the album, where Ro shit talks like a pro and shows the kind of verbal dexterity that might get a few looks from A&R if he can keep that momentum going.