Rick Ross is one of Hip Hop’s biggest hustlers, and when it comes to the “$500,000 or dinner with JAY-Z?” debate, there’s only one side that the Biggest Bawse is taking. With the debate taking over social media once again thanks to Hov himself weighing in, the MMG mogul explained on Monday (October 23) why picking the brain of the Brooklyn billionaire is more valuable than pocketing half a million dollars.
“I’ma take the dinner and I’ma tell you why,” Ross said in a video posted to his Instagram Stories. “In ’08 when I turned in my second album [Trilla], 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.”
Rozay credited Hov’s advice with helping him level up as an artist which, in turn, brought him more success in the rap game and laid the foundation for his other lucrative business ventures.
“It took me to another level as a writer, another level as an artist,” he continued. “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?”
The debate surrounding a meal with JAY-Z or $500,000 was revived after Jigga was asked about it in a recent interview with CBS News’ Gayle King.
The Roc Nation mogul set the record straight by saying that fans should definitely take the money as he’s already shared his blueprint to success in his music.
“You gotta take the money,” he replied with little hesitation. “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!
“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.”
