Rick Ross

Rick Ross is an American rapper and businessman whose two-decade music career has produced multiple defining late-2000s and 2010s American hip-hop-music roles — particularly his 2009 founding of Maybach Music Group and his 2010 album Teflon Don. He was born William Leonard Roberts II on January 28, 1976, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, into an African-American working-class family. His mother subsequently relocated the family to Carol City, Florida (just north of Miami), when Rick was a young child.

His teenage and early-adulthood career across the late-1990s — including his 1995–1997 work as a Florida state correctional officer at the South Florida Reception Center prison (a career fact that he subsequently denied for many years until correctional-officer documentation surfaced in 2008, although he ultimately acknowledged the correctional-officer career) — preceded his late-1990s and early-2000s American Miami-area underground hip-hop public profile. He adopted the stage name Rick Ross in approximately 2000, derived from the Los Angeles-area drug-trafficker "Freeway" Rick Ross.

His 2006 first commercial album Port of Miami — released by Slip-n-Slide Records and Def Jam Records — debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and produced his American hip-hop public profile through his single "Hustlin'." The 2006 first commercial album sold over 187,000 American copies in its first week.

His 2009 founding of Maybach Music Group (his own American hip-hop record label, which subsequently signed Wale, Meek Mill, Stalley, Omarion, and French Montana) produced his late-2000s and 2010s American hip-hop-industry public profile. His 2010 fourth commercial album Teflon Don — released by Maybach Music Group and Def Jam Records — sold over 700,000 American copies and produced the singles "B.M.F." (which featured Styles P) and "Aston Martin Music" (which featured Drake and Chrisette Michele).

His subsequent commercial career has produced multiple American hip-hop chart hits — particularly his 2012 fifth commercial album God Forgives, I Don't (which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200), his 2014 sixth commercial album Mastermind, his 2015 seventh commercial album Hood Billionaire, and his 2024 eleventh commercial album Too Good to Be True (with Meek Mill). He has been with multiple American partners and has six children.

His name Rick is the English short form of Richard (from the Old Germanic root meaning "powerful ruler"). Rick was a popular American boys' name across the mid-to-late 20th century.