April 17, 2006 @ 11:00 am

Rick Ross

Casey Woods

As the clock edges toward midnight, the Rick Ross rap army slowly invades the sedate lobby of Miami’s Doubletree Grand Hotel. A cloud of sweet-smelling smoke puffs out of a sentry line of sleek SUVs while a pair of dancers in teeny skirts and stilettos shivers in the hotel’s plush armchairs. Ballers flash gold teeth as they munch on greasy food in the bar, waiting for the signal to head back out. Ross, aka William Roberts, 26, surveys the swirling commotion—all in anticipation of his long-awaited label-signing party at South Beach hotspot Opium Garden—from the cab of a tricked-out white semi truck parked out front. He’s one of the first stars to come out of Slip-N-Slide’s (Trick Daddy, Trina) partnership with Def Jam. And for that, a celebration is in order. “We all like family, and everybody has a role to play. I play my position, and they play theirs,” says Ross of the crowd, most of them from his ’hood, Miami’s tough Carol City. “I respect them and they respect me, ’cause I rose through the ranks of the streets. I ain’t get here for just rapping.” With his raw, relentless voice, Ross has carved that journey into his music—and his arm. A tattoo of the Carol City zip code (33055) and AK-47s bisects the flesh running from left elbow to wrist, while an image of Jesus rests on the right. In one breath, Ross credits notorious Miami gang leader Kenneth “Boobie” Williams (now serving a life sentence for murder) as his most important mentor. In the next, Psalm 27:2 rolls off his tongue: When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell. “I recite that two or three times a day, because it applies to all those niggas, all those haters, all those police, and all those doubters,” says Ross. With his major-label debut, Port of Miami, on its way and his hit single, “Hustlin’,” making waves, Ross is set to silence any skeptics once and for all, though he won over Miami long ago. “He’s more than an artist around here,” says Poe Boy Entertainment vice president Gucci Pucci. “He’s a movement.” Ross sees it in less philosophical terms. “These my niggas right here,” he says, reaching for the door of the white truck. “They not going to let me out of their sight, because I’m the only thing they got going in their life.” Just like it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a ’hood to build a rapper.

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