Rick Ross made $1million upon signing to JAY-Z and L.A. Reid at Def Jam in the mid 2000s – and he apparently didn’t spend a dollar of it.
Rozay was a guest on Daily Deposits Miami‘s season one finale episode that premiered on September 19, where he talked about the life-changing deal from his early days. Noting how $1 million had always been his goal, the Florida native explained that his goals quickly expanded upon realizing that he had officially become a millionaire.
“It’s like when I signed, when I did my deal [with] JAY-Z and L.A. Reid – I got a mil ticket off the rip. You see?” he began. “So when I got it, the plan changed right then. Because it was one point, it was one time when my goal was to get a mil. Rozay wanted to be a millionaire. But the closer I got, the closer I got, the realer [it became], [then it was] fuck a mil. Boom, you get that right off the rip. Boom, you gotta readjust the shit. Now it’s [$5million.] You know what I’m saying?”
He continued: “So when I got my first mil ticket, I was so motivated, so inspired, I ain’t touch that. I ain’t even buy a car. I had already had a Maybach. I already had the white BMW with the white rims on it and all that. I ain’t even wanna spend that. Because you know, I’m the type of n-gga – I’ll spend. You feel me?”
“So I said, ‘N-gga,I’m finna stack.’ So I just wanted to stack money. I had a hit record, I was doing shows. This all new to me. You gotta remember, before this I had been making music 15 years and really ain’t got nothing really from it.”
You can watch the full interview below.
During a 2021 appearance on fellow NBA retirees Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson’s All The Smoke podcast, former NBA pro Jamal Crawford recalled going to dinner with JAY-Z in the mid 2000s and observing his reaction to Rick Ross’ breakout single, “Hustlin’.”
Released in March 2006, “Hustlin’” put Rick Ross on the map. The larger-than-life street anthem cracked the Billboard Hot 100 while pushing his debut album Port of Miami — which arrived later that year — to the top of the Billboard 200.
“JAY-Z, I remember we went to eat after a game, and he was playing Rick Ross … ‘Everyday I’m Hustlin,’” he remembered. “And Jay was mesmerized by the song. He was like, ‘Whip it, whip it real hard!’ He kept saying that part, he loved it. And that was my introduction to Rick Ross, through JAY-Z. Ross has never heard that story.”
The buzz surrounding “Hustlin’” lead to JAY-Z — who was the president and CEO of Def Jam at the time — signing Rick Ross to the historic Hip Hop label following a bidding war that also included Diddy’s Bad Boy Records and Irv Gotti’s Murder Inc.
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