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Rick Ross: Making Waves out of Miami
William Roberts is his real name, but whether he goes by that or by Rick Ro$$, he is becoming a name to remember in the business. It all started to go down in the late 1990s when he returned to Miami after going to college for football in Georgia. Back home, he got hooked up with Slip N Slide Records and started getting guest spots on the records of such hip hop artists as Trick Daddy and Trina.
Why Rick Ross, by the way? That's a good question, and I'm surprised we made it this far without this topic coming up sooner. Because Rick Ross is definitely an odd moniker to have in the hip hop business when it's not even your real name, right? Well, word is, that Rick Ro$$ got the name from a famous drug kingpin down in his neck of the woods.
Solo Succe$$
It was through the local name that he started to build for himself on other people's records, and through his affiliation with bigger names like Trick Daddy, that Rick Ro$$ got his big breaks on the solo scene. The first solo Rick Ross album came out in 2006, called " Port of Miami."
It sold nearly 200,000 copies in the first week, in large part because of ring tones? What am I talking about? You see, ring tones are big business these days, as anybody with a cell phone should know. Brilliantly, some Rick Ross songs were marketed before the album even came out as ring tones. In fact, nearly 1 million ring tones of the Rick Ross song "Hustlin" were sold before the record hit stores.
The song got even more play after the release, when Rick Ross remixed it with Young Jeezy and Jay-Z and sold it over the Internet as a download. If anything, when you listen to Rick Ross on this song and other earlier hits like "Blow" and "Scarface," you got to appreciate not only his lyrical talent but the fact that either he or somebody around him is an innovator when it comes to 21st century marketing of hip hop music.
Rick Ross is Rolling
All of this success with the first Rick Ross album only has led to even greater rewards for the rap artist going forward. The latest Rick Ross record came out this past spring, in March 2008, called "Trilla." It started out already in the Billboard 200 and has put Rick Ross on the map as a legitimate national player in the industry.
The number one Rick Ross song of the record, called "The Boss," starred him and T-Pain and has become the top selling record for the artist. It made it all the way to number 17 on the charts.
Expect similar success from another Rick Ross single off the album called "Here I Am," where the artist gets a little help from his friends Avery Storm and Nelly. Another single "Speedin" got to number 21 on the charts with R. Kelly starring on the single with him.
