How Jay-Z changed Rick Ross’ writing process: “It took me to another level”
Jay-Z changed the course of Rick Ross‘ career in 2008 with some key advice about how to write music. At the time, Rozay had just finished his second album Trilla and was recording to pretty much every likeable beat that came his way.
While weighing in on the “$500,000 or dinner with Jay-Z?” debate, Ross once told the story about the time he sat down for lunch with Jay, who told him to halve the number of songs he was recording in order to focus on better-quality music.
“I’ma take the dinner and I’ma tell you why,” he said. “In ’08, when I turned in my second album, I had a meeting with Hov. We went to lunch. Philippe Chow, Manhattan — the orange chicken on the stick with the peanut sauce was the vibe at the time. Let me cut through the conversation.
“He said, ‘Rozay, versus writing to every beat you like, write to every record you could make work.’ He told me a quick story about ‘Big Pimpin.’ I said, ‘Okay, bet.’ I went from writing one record to every 80 beats I like, to writing 40 records out of every 80 beats I could make work.”
With Ross only dropping his debut album Port of Miami in 2006, compared to Jay releasing Reasonable Doubt 10 years prior, the advice was exactly what he needed. “It took me to another level as a writer, another level as an artist,” he admitted. “The amount of work I was putting out was next level. So you gotta ask yourself, are you ready to digest the knowledge or you just want to look at this watch at the table?”
Jay once claimed that he regretted the lyrics he rapped in ‘Big Pimpin’, which appeared on 1999’s Vol. 3… Life and Times of S. Carter album and peaked at number 18 on the Hot 100. “That’s the exception. It was like… I can’t believe I said that. And kept saying it?” he told The Wall Street Journal. “What type of animal would say this sort of thing? Reading it is really harsh.”
While Ross’ lunch with Jay was a life-changing experience, Jay himself believes that accepting half a million dollars would be more beneficial for fans. “You gotta take the money,” he told CBS News. “What I’ma say? You got all that [wisdom] in the music for $10.99! That’s a bad deal. I wouldn’t tell you to cut a bad deal. Take the $500,000, go buy some albums and listen to the albums — it’s all there!”
He continued, “If you piece it together and really listen to the music for the words, for what it is, it’s all there. Everything that I said was gonna happen, happened. Everything that I said I wanted to do, I’ve done. There’s the blueprint. The blueprint, literally, to me and my life and my journey is there already.”
Ross and Jay have collaborated numerous times over the years on songs such as ‘F*ckwithmeyouknowigotit’, ‘The Devil Is a Lie’, ‘Free Mason’ and ‘Maybach Music’, as well as other tracks by Kanye West, Meek Mill and DJ Khaled.