2015 was supposed to be a rebuilding year. At first it was shaping up to be. Wale’s Album about Nothing came out and debuted at number one. Meek was back home after five months in Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility. He was putting the finishing touches on Dreams Worth More than Money. Even wild-ass Gunplay had a release date on the calendar for his long-awaited solo album. The team was still intact. The movement was still moving.
Having just dropped Mastermind and Hood Billionaire back-to-back, I was in no rush to put out another album. The project I was most focused on at the time was myself. Over the last year I’d lost nearly one hundred pounds and there was still work to be done. Ever since the seizures, I knew I needed to start taking better care of myself. But it wasn’t until I discovered CrossFit and put my own spin on it—I called it RossFit—that the pounds started to fall off.
I was eating better too. I’d hired a personal chef, Amaris, and she was making it easy for me. The first thing I did was swap out soda for water. Then Amaris started giving me this drink after my workouts that was so good I thought it was Hawaiian punch. It turned out to be beet juice infused with organic fruits and a splash of lemonade. Then Amaris tricked me into eating cauliflower. She mashed it up and served it to me with short ribs. I could have sworn it was mashed potatoes. Who ever thought Rozay would be drinking beet juice and eating cauliflower? And if I just happened to go to dinner at Prime One Twelve and be in the mood for some dessert I let myself have it. A boss doesn’t have restrictions. Sometimes a boss has to eat like a boss.
Speaking of Amaris, she was riding shotgun when my problems started that summer. She had just gotten to Atlanta and we had plans to go to a nursery and get a whole bunch of herb and vegetable plants. We were about to get Rozay Farms going and have all types of shit growing there. Collard green plants. Tomatoes. Cucumbers. Sweet potatoes. I really wanted to find me an Asian pear tree. Shout-out to all the pears. We had a whole day planned out. But as soon as we pulled out the house we got pulled over by the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office. As Deputy Sheriff Tommy Grier stepped out of his cruiser and started walking toward us I looked over at Amaris and told her everything was going to be okay. She was already praying and clutching at her rosary beads.
Grier looked like the type of guy who liked to cut eyeholes in his bedsheets and wear it over his head when he wasn’t in uniform. He told me he’d pulled me over for having illegal window tints. Too dark, he said. I knew that wasn’t what this was about. I hadn’t interacted with the police in Fayette County one time since I bought the Holyfield house and now all of a sudden they were waiting outside my property to check out the tints on my Mulsanne.
“Is that your house you came out of?”
“It is.”
“Why does your car have Florida tags?”
“Because I live in Florida too.”
“Well, you’ll need to change those, Mr. Roberts. You’re in Fayetteville, Georgia, now.”
From there it became obvious that this was no routine traffic stop. I was cuffed and detained in the back of the cruiser after Grier said he detected the smell of marijuana and called for backup. That was a lie. There was some weed in the car—I have people driving my cars and rolling me joints literally all day long—but there was no way he could have smelled a couple of joints sitting in a plastic bag underneath the floorboard. It wasn’t like I’d been smoking in the car when he pulled us over. We had just left the house.
But Grier saying he smelled weed gave him the probable cause he needed to search my car. When he did, he found the joints. He also found my Glock. I had an active license to carry firearms so that should have been no problem. But from the look on Grier’s face I could tell he was excited by his discovery.
Amaris started crying when a female officer arrived on the scene and put her in handcuffs. I could see her knees buckling. I don’t think Amaris had ever gotten so much as a parking ticket. That’s when I started going bad on Grier. I’d told him Amaris had nothing to do with anything that was in my vehicle but he didn’t care. Even Grier’s partner, Deputy Tyler Simpson, was saying she should be let go. Simpson was another fat, thick-necked white guy but he was actually cool and respectful the whole time. Grier was the only one fucking with us. I told him he was a donut-eating fat fuck and that his wife was stepping out on him and when he found out he was going to forgive her because that’s just the type of pussy cracker he is. Grier tried to talk back but he didn’t have the IQ to go insult for insult with me. He was out of his league.
I talked shit to Grier the whole way to Fayette County Jail and I walked in that bitch yelling at the top of my lungs. I had to set a precedent how I was going to be treated here.
“Rozay in the motherfucking building! Which one of you fucking pigs are going out to get me some Wingstop?!”
Deputy Simpson brought me to the short-term holding cell, where he took off my cuffs. I kept telling him not to.
“Leave them on! I want Grier to take them off! Grier put ’em on me. Please have him take them off too!”
I saw Grier walk out of an office with a stack of binders a few minutes later. He started bragging to his coworkers.
“Looks like I’m all over TMZ! I guess this guy’s a big-time rapper.”
Fear Grier was acting like he didn’t know who lived in the most famous house in Fayetteville. This guy was such a loser.
After spending ten hours in central booking I was booked on a misdemeanor marijuana charge. A few hours later I posted a $2,400 bond and was free to go. I’d met and chopped it up with a few real niggas in there so on my way out I paid their bonds too.
Amaris wouldn’t get out for another twelve hours. Since I’d been arrested before, my fingerprints and information was all in the system. They had nothing on her and had to make sure she wasn’t giving them a fake alias. Finally they let her go. I sent her on vacation to Paris the following week because I felt so bad about putting her through that ordeal. She was traumatized.
I was heading home but I knew whatever this was really about wasn’t over yet. Two weeks later I found out.
Rapper Rick Ross Arrested on Suspicion of Pistol-Whipping, Kidnapping Employee
—The Los Angeles Times
Warrants: Man Assaulted by Rapper Rick Ross “Lost Use of Jaw”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Rick Ross Charged in Assault that Left Victim Unable to Chew Solid Foods
—Fayette County News
This is how it went down. Jonathan and Leo were laborers who had previously worked on one of my homes in Miami. At the time under the supervision of my general contractor, a guy named Garabello.
When I bought the Holyfield estate, Garabello moved up to Georgia and he brought his whole team with him, Jonathan and Leo included. There was a lot of work to be done and it was going to take a while to get this place up and running. The groundskeeping had been neglected for years. The house needed renovations. Furnishing all 109 rooms was its own process.
Among his many responsibilities Black Bo served as the estate’s property manager. He oversaw all the work being done and would give me updates. Because Garabello didn’t know English, Black ended up communicating more with Jonathan, who was bilingual. Over time Jonathan became an intermediary between the two.
Long story short, I ended up letting Garabello go. But I kept Jonathan. Jonathan vouched for Leo so Leo got to stay too. Since neither of them were from Georgia, I let them stay at the guesthouse. I was still living at the studio house. The big house was still a work in progress and security had been an issue. We’d had incidents of folks jumping the gates. The community hadn’t yet adjusted to the property being under new ownership and it hadn’t been made clear that trespassing would not be tolerated. That’s why I was still staying at the studio house.
On the morning of June 7, Black went over to the big house to check on things. It was a Sunday. Nine out of ten Sunday mornings Black and I were not home. We’re usually still on the road. When Black got to the house he noticed a few unusual things. The first was that nobody was outside working. The second was that an unfamiliar car was parked outside of the guesthouse. The third red flag was that the guesthouse’s garage was closed. All the groundskeeping tools were stored in the garage—the lawn mowers, Weed Eaters, rakes and shovels—and it was always left open.
Black knocked on the front door but no one answered. When he went around back and tried to look inside he couldn’t. A black plastic material covered the window.
He headed over to the main house, where he finally found Leo. The two of them exchanged words. Black wanted to know why nobody was outside and whose car was parked at the guesthouse. He couldn’t get a straight answer out of him. Leo was evasive. He kept changing the subject. At that point Black called me and said we had a situation on our hands.
“Nobody was working when I got here,” he said. “And I think they’ve got people staying there too.”
I knew what was going on and I was pissed. These Chicos thought I was out of town and decided to have themselves a party. Not only were they not working, they had brought strangers to my home and were up to who knows what there. I immediately had Black come pick me up.
The garage door had been opened by the time we got back. I grabbed my pistol, told Black to wait outside and stormed into the house. As I made my way down the hallway I could hear activity coming from inside the bedroom. I could smell smoke and it wasn’t weed. I couldn’t recognize the smell. I called out but nobody answered. Then I entered the room.
Due to the taped-off windows it was dark in there. But I could see that there was a young woman that I didn’t know. She was topless. Then I felt somebody reach out and grab me from behind.
I spun around and struck whoever had just touched me with the pistol. The I hit him again. I must have got him with the corner of it because blood was pouring everywhere. That’s when I realized it was Leo. He was split real bad.
The young woman started screaming, and when I turned back to her I saw that she had a little girl with her. Then I heard two more voices coming down the hallway. It was another couple and they had a child as well. Aside from Leo I didn’t recognize any of these people. I started waving the gun around and told them all to get the fuck out the house. They did so in a hurry.
When I went outside Black was fighting with Jonathan. Jonathan had showed up and tried to go into the house after he heard the commotion. Of course Black didn’t let that happen and punches had been thrown.
I cussed everybody out and made them leave. The whole incident went down in less than ten minutes. The next day, after my temper subsided, I had Black reach out to Jonathan and Leo to smooth things over. I was still upset by what they’d done but cracking Leo’s dome open had been an accident. It didn’t need to go down like that.
I don’t know what Jonathan said to Black when he called. But he most definitely didn’t tell him that he had already gone to the police. Or that he had told them that Black and I had dragged him back inside the house and beat him with the pistol for another ten minutes.
Three days later Deputy Grier was creeping outside my gates waiting for me. And two weeks after that twenty US Marshals descended on the studio house.
After three weeks in the hole I was now on house arrest. I was feeling paranoid. I knew that they were tracking my every move with the GPS ankle monitor, but was it possible the device was recording my conversations? My lawyer said that was impossible but even then I wasn’t convinced. This case was some bullshit but it had me suspicious of everything. Especially the part involving those US Marshals. Anything having to do with the feds immediately had me on high alert.
One of the first things I remember happening while I was on house arrest was that Meek started going at Drake on Twitter. That was puzzling to me. I had a longstanding friendship with Drake and as far as I knew he and Meek did too. They’d had a huge record together a couple years back called “Amen,” and Meek had just featured Drake on a song called “R.I.C.O.” that was shaping up to be one of the bigger singles off his album. Now for some reason Meek was coming for Drake’s neck.
Publicly Meek was saying that Drake had offended him by using a ghostwriter on “R.I.C.O.” I didn’t believe that. My thinking was that one of two things was happening. Either Meek was letting his nuts hang and thought he had the juice to come for Drake’s crown or this was about something else. I had a feeling what that something else might be. The woman Meek and Drake both had strong feelings for. Nicki Minaj.
Nicki and I had worked together on several occasions over the years and once she and Meek started dating she would be over my house all the time. They were there the night before the feds came. Nicki was cool. I didn’t have anything against her. But this was a new relationship and when push came to shove I knew Nicki would never go against Wayne and Drake. That Young Money team spirit was strong like MMG’s was. I didn’t want to see Meek’s pillow talk get used against him. I told him to be careful.
But Lil Fish was in love and he wasn’t trying to hear that from me. So I took a back seat to the situation and let it play out on its own. It didn’t go well for Meek. Drake was battle-tested and war-ready and fired back with two devastating disses. By the time Meek could come up with one of his own the general consensus was that this feud was already over with and that it hadn’t even been close.
Behind the scenes I did what I could to see that things didn’t get out of hand. I spoke with J. Prince, Drake’s big homie, and he was on the same page I was. It was nothing but love and mutual respect. But when I reached out to Birdman, Drake’s label boss, I was met with indifference and dismissiveness. His guy was winning this war so why should he give a fuck about mine?
At that point I really started to second-guess my relationship with Birdman. Ever since Wayne called me from Rikers Island I’d known he wasn’t being supported by Stunna. Now Wayne was suing him for more than $50 million in unpaid advances and album royalties. Meanwhile Khaled had just gotten himself out of his deal at Cash Money after years of having to pay producers out of his own pocket because Birdman refused to cut the check. T-Mix, the Suave House producer I used to work with in Greg Street’s basement, had gone on to do production for Cash Money after Mannie Fresh left the label. He never received proper credit or compensation for that work.
This was not an honorable man. For a long time I turned a blind eye to that because I idolized Birdman and had so much respect for his accomplishments in the game. We’d done a whole album together at one point. But after he showed his hand with the Meek and Drake situation all of my respect for him disintegrated.
I wanted to go to war for Meek but at the same time I didn’t see the need to ruin my friendship with Drake. I had a feeling the two of them were going to patch things up soon anyway. But I wanted to make it clear I was in Lil Fish’s corner and I did. So I went at Birdman instead.
Color money got your bitch out on a world tour
My lil homie made a million on his girl’s tour
We back to back and down to whack a nigga’s unborn
Miami niggas got ’em changing all the gun laws
So run, Forrest, got some shooters and they dying too
I got more money than that pussy that you’re signed to
—“Color Money,” Black Market (2015)
I wouldn’t find out for another month whether I’d be allowed to travel for work while under house arrest and I was starting to go a little crazy. So I locked myself into the studio and started working on a new album, Black Market.
Even if I got the green light to travel I knew there would be a lot of restrictions. I wouldn’t be able to properly promote an album. Black Market was also my last contractual obligation to Def Jam and I had a feeling they weren’t going to be rolling out the red carpet for my next release. We’d made a lot of history together but our relationship had run its course. They knew I was out of there after this one.
I needed to find a way to make this album special. Hood Billionaire had its moments but didn’t connect with fans the same way Teflon Don, Rich Forever and God Forgives, I Don’t had. I needed to right the ship with Black Market as I looked ahead to major label free agency.
I thought back to 2010 and the release of Teflon Don. How I’d teased the album with The Albert Anastasia EP first and the anticipation it created after people heard “B.M.F.” and “MC Hammer.” I was going to do that again. Black Market needed a precursor. That precursor became Black Dollar.
Learn to walk a tightrope
Ever seen a rich nigga go broke?
They putting liens on a nigga’s things
Publicize your demise and by all means
Your family fortune is forever what you stood on
Sold dreams, fantasies that put the hood on
You reap what you sow and they speaking repossessions
To the culture itself, these are powerful lessons
These niggas always smiled when I came around
They let you know my reputation when you in my town
A real nigga, you gon’ know that by the contract
Bottom line blood, show me where them ones at
That paper it get funny when publishing is involved
Mechanicals never mattered because that was your dog
Now you hands-on but things don’t ever seem right
You make a call to give your lawyer the green light
He look into it then hit you up with the bad news
It’s so familiar, he did the same with the last dudes
Mafioso, baby girl, cash rules
Every dollar accounted for, double M the crew
—“Foreclosures,” Black Dollar (2015)
Black Dollar was a project that came out of a period of solitude. I wasn’t traveling then. I wasn’t in the clubs. I wasn’t smoking. I was at home. Those circumstances brought out a different side of me. Less bravado, more wisdom. It wasn’t that I made a conscious effort to make a different kind of album. It’s just what was coming out of me at the time. Even the beats I was choosing were different.
The spirit of Black Dollar carried over into Black Market. Eventually I’d gotten the okay to travel for domestic shows and appearances but I was well aware that this album might be my last as a free man. If it was, then what did I want to say? What did I want my legacy to look like? That was the energy behind songs like “Foreclosures” and “Free Enterprise.”
The Miami Don remains an unapologetic and indefensible brute—and he says as much on this very LP—but this rough, honest, and ambitious work is like his Raging Bull, taking the listener on a compelling, dirty journey that’s also a connectable character study, and then letting some slick features play while the credits roll.
—AllMusic
The motivated, slightly weary Ross heard on Black Market is a better fit for the moment than the bulletproof supervillain of old. Ross has proven his resilience in the past; maybe carefully controlled doses of reality are just what he needs to move forward.
—Pitchfork
Black Market is the first moment I can remember Ross sounding comfortable as a middle-aged rapper. He’s grunting out these dense and writerly couplets, hanging out with Nas and John Legend, making the DJ Premier track he’d probably always wanted to make. He’s rapping more about relationships, less about drug-dealing. He’s still funny, still willing to chant about how good his dick is on a song called ‘Dope Dick.’ But he finally sounds like the grown-up that he’s been for a long time. He’s a legacy artist now. It suits him.
—Stereogum
Two months after the release of Black Market, a Fayette County grand jury formally indicted me and Black on twelve felony charges stemming from the incident at my estate: two counts of kidnapping, seven counts of aggravated assault and three counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. That was when the severity of my situation started to sink in. I only needed to be convicted of one of these crimes to get a life sentence.
Considering the charges I had pending I was surprised to receive an invitation to the White House a few weeks after my indictment. President Barack Obama invited a dozen artists to Washington, DC, for a roundtable discussion about criminal justice reform and My Brother’s Keeper, his initiative to empower young black brothers to reach their full potential. I was honored to be a part of that group, which included Khaled, Wale, Busta Rhymes, Chance the Rapper, Nicki Minaj, Pusha T, J. Cole, John Legend, Ludacris, Alicia Keys and Janelle Monae.
My legal troubles aside, it was perfect timing for me to meet Obama. Two weeks earlier Obama had granted executive clemency to Wayne Parker. Obama was commuting the sentences of hundreds of nonviolent drug offenders and after seventeen years in prison, Wayne was coming home. Being that I was the last person to see Wayne before the feds snatched him up, it was only right that I be the first person he saw when he got out in a couple months. I was going to pick him up and take him straight to the Mercedes-Benz dealership. I wanted my big homie to be living the same way he was when he went in. I owed Obama a debt of gratitude and I wanted to thank him personally. I also wanted to see if he could do anything for Kano. Though Kano’s case was a little more complicated.
Obama was telling us about the power artists have to influence the youth in a meaningful way. What stuck with me was when he got to talking about all of his plans for after his presidency was over. This wasn’t about recruiting a bunch of celebrities to get behind him so that he could get some votes for his next reelection. He genuinely cared about making a difference. I respected that. He inspired me to double down on my efforts to do the same.
Obama was talking some real shit but at some point my mind started to wander. This was so surreal. It had been ten years since I’d written the song “White House” for Port of Miami and now I was in the actual White House meeting with the President of the United States. I was proud of myself. I’d come a long way.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
My trip down memory lane had just gotten interrupted by the sound of my ankle monitor, which was informing me that it needed to be charged. I extended my leg under the desk, hoping it would muffle the sound. But everybody in the room heard that shit go off. Secret Service agents started circling the room trying to figure out where the sound had come from. We’d all had to check our cell phones before the meeting so nobody was supposed to have anything that could be beeping on them.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
Fuck.
All eyes turned to me after it went off the second time. Beads of sweat were once again forming on Khaled’s forehead. Before I could acknowledge what was going on the ankle monitor lost its damn mind.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
“What is that noise?” Obama finally asked. He was the first person to say something.
I raised one hand and pointed the other to my ankle.
“My bad, everyone,” I said.
“Oh, you scared me there, Rick,” Obama responded. “I thought this place was gonna blow!”
Everybody had a laugh at that one. But I was shaken up too. Before my daydream was cut short I’d been reminiscing about where I was when I made “White House.” How I still hadn’t spent a cent of my Def Jam money and was in the studio between tour stops trying to make the best album I possibly could. How I was scared of having fifteen minutes of fame and then going back to being a nobody. But I’d kept at it and I’d weathered the storms. Now my fifteen minutes was going ten years strong.
But the alarm of my ankle monitor brought my attention back to reality. It reminded me of my current situation. As far as I’d come, I was close to losing it all. And my fate would be far worse than just going back to being broke. I could be headed to the chain gang.