The difference is that people who've actually been through the lifestyle Ross describes almost always don't rap about it for the sake of glorifying it... the message you get from their music is far more conflicted than anything in a Rick Ross album. They were also in it for the money, but the way you get that money usually has a cost... Rick Ross doesn't know much of anything about that cost, which is why it's not reflected in his lyrics. And the lyrics from people who've been through it tend to be introspective more than anything... there's usually a theme in the lyrics (pain, remorse, inner conflict, etc.) which people can relate to because that's what us as humans feel... show me a real person who is as one dimensional and vapid as the lyrics in the average Rick Ross song. It's entertainment, true, but that's all it is... there's no "value" to it. Now, you could argue that there's no value to the lyrics of, say, a Jacka album, but that would be more about the "value" of the content and less about the value of the self-portrait that the music portrays.