Rick Ross Calls Himself One Of the Biggest Ghostrwriters In the Rap Game

Rick Ross is amping up his promo and music output as the release date for his new album Black Market nears. In an interview with Time, Rozay touches on everything from pears to remixing Adele songs. Over the summer, ghostwriting became the talk of the hip-hop world after Rozay's protege Meek Mill accused Drake of having tracks from his If You're Reading This It's Too Late release written by Quentin Miller. In the interview with Time, Renzel brings up ghostwriting despite not being asked about it and says that he has a record on Black Market dedicated to the controversial topic and goes as far as saying that he is "one of the biggest [ghostwriters] in the rap game."

How did your time in the headlines shape the direction of the album?

It most definitely made it a more personal record, it made it a more—I don’t want to use the word serious, but more a topic-driven record. I had a lot of time to just sit by myself, so I had a lot more things I wanted to address. That’s what I did on this LP. I spoke on different things. One of them goes by the name of “Ghostwriter.” I finally wrote a record telling the way it feels for me to be a ghostwriter, and not only a ghostwriter, but one of the biggest in the rap game. Because of my own personal success I’ve always been able to keep that in the shadows. On this record, I just felt it was so current. It was needed.

The reporter did a good job asking a follow up question about the beef between Drake and Meek and authenticity:

Ghostwriting was a big topic this year with the feud between Drake and Meek Mill. Do you think that having someone write rhymes for you is necessarily at odds with being an authentic artist?

It depends on really the point you’re looking at. If you’re a battle rapper on the block, the emcee battle challenger, not writing your rhymes could really hurt you. When you’re an artist where maybe the focus is really the talent and the different things you bring to the game, I believe it’s more understandable. Someone who may have another vision or just ideas that are priceless versus someone who’s like, “I’m basing my entire career off the words I’m finna tell you right now over this 30-second period.” I’m not speaking to anybody in particular, but let’s say for instance if you was DMX and had a ghostwriter, it’d maybe change the [perception] versus if you was will.i.am. I think that’s more about the music, the records.

Before Ross became the Boss, he spent a good amount of time hanging out in various South Florida studios and was signed to Suave House Records first and then Slip-N-Slide Records years before his 2006 debut Port of Miami dropped. Rumor has it that Ross penned songs for the likes of Trina and Trick Daddy--both of whom were hitmakers for Slip-N-Slide in the label's early aughts. In more recent years, there have been plenty of Diddy verses that stylistically sound like they were conceptualized by Ross.