BuddyPress.org

Make a plugin or put it in your functions.php.

function pc_get_userrole ($user_id) {

$user = new WP_User($user_id);

$userclean = $user->roles[0];

return $userclean;

}

Call it like this.

echo pc_get_userrole(bp_current_user_id());

Not sure how well it works, but it worked well enough for me.