With A New Vision And Fiancée Lira Galore At His Side, Rick Ross Is More Driven Than Ever

Have you ever seen a couple argue?
It’s awkward. I just witnessed Rick Ross’s fiancée Lira Galore confront him about cheating. She threw a piece of evidence (specifically, a pink thong) at him. Then, she stormed out of their luxurious dining room into a breathtaking balcony overlooking Hollywood and Los Angeles.

And then the director yelled cut.

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I saw this happen a few times, actually. We were on the set of Rozay’s upcoming video for “Sorry,” which is the first single off Black Market. While tabloids might love that argument stuff, there was actually none of that going on in real life. It was all for the video. Sorry, tabloids.
In fact, between every take, Lira and Rozay smiled, laughed and/or hugged. At one point (without cameras rolling) Galore jumped and wrapped her legs around The Bawse’s waist. Sure, Ross raps about her doing that on “Sorry,” but this wasn’t for the video. It was just an embrace before filming resumed.
There was more of their affection earlier in the day too, when we sat down for an interview and discussed their engagement with Lira beside him.

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“Me and Lira are so close that it wasn’t even about a question,” he told me, while she rested her feet on his lap. “When the time came, I put that [ring] on her hand and let her know, ’It’s time to take it to the next level.’

Check Out The Behemoth Engagement Ring Rick Ross Got His Fiance

“She’s a rider,” he continued. “She’s a young star. She’s a genius, a great thinker. Even more important, she’s a great person.”

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I asked about the engagement because “Sorry” touches on Ross’s romantic side. The cut also features Chris Brown in one of his most revealing moments. “Gave you my word but they were just broken promises,” he sings on the hook. “Broken condoms, lipstick marks and unprotected sex/ I feel like sh-t/ You know I ain’t sh-t/ I’m sorry.”
How real is that?
Ross was floored when he heard those lyrics for the first time too. “I was like, ‘Yo, my homie really healing himself,’” he said. “That’s a young boss. When you go through something with someone that you forever will care about, sometimes you gotta discuss it. As fans, that’s what we gotta respect. There’s so many more things he could’ve said relating to any relationship or any woman, but he chose those words.”

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You can expect more of “Sorry’s” honesty on Ross’s upcoming Black Market LP, which is still being finalized (he told me he wanted to record seven songs that week). It’s set to feature J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League and Jake One production and it’s also poised to be his most honest work to date.
“The album is most definitely my most sincere, maybe my most powerful yet,” Ross explained. “It’s about me really opening my mind up past making music that I just wanna hear in the club, but actually having discussions with motherf–kers that they may actually absorb and understand what I’m talking about.”
We saw some of that on his latest mixtape Black Dollar. On “Bill Gates,” for example, he encouraged kids to avoid selling drugs and to focus on flipping restaurants. This obviously shows a different side of Ross than the newcomer we met back in 2006. “The same way I gave them ‘Hustlin’’ and was talking about straight hustlin’, I gotta give them the game with where my mindset is at now,” he said.

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Rick also opened up about “crying in the dark” on Black Dollar’s “We Gon Make It,” which revealed vulnerability rarely seen from The Bawse. I asked him what moments inspired that line, curious to see what moved MMG’s titan to tears.
“I remember I flew out to New York,” he said, recalling his early days with Suave House Records CEO Tony Draper and EPMD’s Erick Sermon. “This is before I got on…I was in a nice ass hotel room and I remember watching this award show and tears came to my eyes, n—a, like, ‘When the f—k I’ma get on?’
“I just remember walking around my room like [makes fuming noises],” he added. “Me being a passionate motherf–ker, you just turn that into what drives you. Whenever I’m confronted, whenever I’m challenged, once I decide how I’ma deal with it, I can’t wait to get to the studio.”

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Ross hit the studio again this year, amidst challenges. In July, he was released on bond after being arrested for kidnapping, assault and battery charges. He reportedly had to risk his $5 million mansion to make that happen. And he wears a reminder of that every day.
“I think me sitting here right now with you, with an ankle monitor on, out on bond, multiple millions of dollars tied up, we’re in a situation where it’s do-or-die,” he explained. “So, now what you’ve been getting is music that I wanted to feed the streets with. These are things that have been at the top of my mind.”
But as Ross wraps up his new album with that in mind, challenges keep coming. The latest issue? Talk of beef within his MMG camp. Last week — two days after my interview with Rozay — Wale and Meek Mill went back-and-forth on social media. It was, in some ways, reminiscent of Meek’s feud with Drake earlier this year.

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During our talk, I asked Ross if there was a part of him that wished Mill wouldn’t have launched into that first anti-Drake Twitter tirade. “A lot of people have a lot of their own opinions,” he said. “But I’ve been in certain positions where people told me not to do that and I would do it again, if I had to. To me, that’s what the art is about. I feel like whatever it is you gonna do, if your heart is into it, thats what you gotta do. That goes for whatever it is.”
Like he said, Ross has been in that position before. Back in 2009, you might recall, he and 50 Cent were engaged in a pretty epic beef. Some doubted Rozay at first, but clearly he’s still going strong, proving the G-Unit general couldn’t end his career. Since he’s been in those shoes, I asked Ross what advice he’s given Meek.
“You do what you wanna do,” he said. “You express yourself with your music the way you want to do it whenever you’re ready to do it.”

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While we were on the topic, I also asked Rozay how he felt when he first heard dis tracks about himself. Although Ross never mentioned 50 Cent’s name, he made an interesting reference to the number 50 anyway.
“All I was saying [at the time] was, ‘Obviously, these people don’t know me. They don’t know I will jump out of a 50-story building for what I believe in. They don’t know. I’ma never stop. I’m a problem.’ That really was my mindset. I don’t fear nothing…Nothing.”
Being fearless is a dope quality to have in a time of great change and that’s exactly where Ross is now. “I’m in a position where I’m renegotiating my new deal and deciding what I want to do as a boss and as an artist,” he said. “A lot of people are interested in bringing advice and good business to the table because 2016 is poised to be one of the best years for my career.”

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Could some of these new moves be in partnership with Jay Z? Recently they took a photo together that had us wondering. My colleague Adam Fleischer wrote a piece asking about a ton of possibilities surrounding this meeting so I asked Ross about it.
Was it a b-ball bet? New music? A joint venture? “I can tell you that it was about a lot of things,” Ross said. “It could be all those things, possibly. It was a great sit-down. I went in there and chopped it up with the homie.”
No matter what he does (whether it’s with Hov or not), Ross said he feels confident with his options. “Me being an artist, the possibilities of me taking my label somewhere else, management, publishing,” he said. “All the stars are aligning right now.”

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But all of these business issues aren’t the focus of this “Sorry” video shoot. Love is. The full vid is set to be released next week and, as the trailer shows, it’s a tale of romance gone wrong. Director Taj Stansberry shed a little more light on it.
“I really wanted to show the magnitude of consequence,” Stansberry told me on the set. “What we think the consequences usually are, sometimes it could go beyond that. Rozay is the leading man. Him and the beautiful Lira are a couple that have some struggles.
“In the midst of them going through something, he has what we would call a side-chick, but it’s the beautiful [Zelia Milan],” he added. “She comes in to fill that role and falls in love with Ross. From there, you just have to see the rest.”

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We’ll also have to stay tuned to see how 2016 turns out for Rozay. From legal issues to talks of MMG infighting, some might wonder how this will all pan out. It won’t be the first time he’s been challenged or doubted.

Listen To Rick Ross’ New Black Dollar Mixtape Now

But seeing Ross and Lira stare out into L.A. at this video set, I thought about that story he shared of him in his New York hotel room. Since then, he’s crafted a successful solo career, an empire with MMG and, perhaps most importantly, he seems to be at his happiest in his personal life. If this is what he’s done since that tear-filled day in N.Y., imagine what he’ll do next.

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